The Best Laptop

I'm looking for recommendations for the best laptop for running Solidworks.
I will be doing a lot of remote cad work and wish for a laptop that won't
hinder my Solidworks cad experience. Positive and negative experiences
appreciated.

 

The best laptop is one that ... NEVER GOES DOWN or if it does it gets
fixed fast.

The only reason I've bought Dell's workstation class laptops (now at
M90 designation) is that I can get the CompleteCare 24 hour fix-replace
warranty. Each Dell I've had has had 1 or 2 fixes in 2 years and Dell
had a service guy out and fixed it in less than 24 hours.

Dell also uses the nVIDIA graphics cards which are certified with
SolidWorks, & I've always had SolidWorks run without a graphics glitch
on them.

I am sure other brands should have similar warranty packages, but I
haven't checked. Alienware is now part of Dell, & Sager and Boxx and
others exist, but I think I'll stick with Dell. The M90 @ about 8-9
lbs is considerably lighter than some of the other "laptops" which
crank in around 14-15 pounds (& some I've heard of are heavier yet).

Bo

 

Hi,

I dont have one, but somewhere in this group is a post about running Windows
XP on an Apple Power Book DUO - and it looked really positive. I'm thinking
before long this could be a really nice solution....though I'm only going by
what I've read!

LB

 

Last week I needed a replacement laptop very quickly.
I found a Top spec dell M70, 1920 x 1200 wide screen, 2.26mhz, 2 gig
ram, 7200 rpm 80 gig HD listed as refurbished, but looked brand new to
me, they delivered by 12.00 the next day for £1100, very nice.
www.europc.co.uk

steve

 

If you search this NG for Lombard you will find a detailed search
including benchmarking against a fast tower. Search on Aviator.

 

Lee, I was the one who put XP Pro & SolidWorks alongside Mac OSX on my
PowerBook and started running SolidWorks.

Though it runs fine on the Apple MacBook Pro, I find it primarily of
use when I am in the field. At my desk, I use my trusty "old" Dell M60
which runs SWks 2006 SP3.4 just fine on my small assemblies and parts.

As the MacBook Pro with Apple's Boot Camp requires a reboot, I don't
work in the MacBook all the time. There are virtualization programs,
as from Parallels, which would allow quick switch-over to the other OS,
there is still a 15-20 second delay last time I heard. I haven't had
time to try virtualization out and it is still in Beta, and the video
part of the virtualization was limited las time I checked, & I didn't
want to run with that limitation.

Bo

 

For what it's worth ('cause I'm still waiting for my inheritance money)
check out

http://www.hypersonic-pc.com

Nice mobile systems, comparable to Alienware and Dell in price and
performance. I found their sales contact helpful and knowledgeable in
spec'ing a laptop for SW and intense gaming.

.... but, still waiting for the dough.

peace, Diego

 

The best thing with Dell, is that if you find a special deal on a
refurb. demo from either their website or calling a sales rep, you may
find you get a formerly top line M70 (only a few months back) that
would have set you back $3,000 or so, for less than $2000. Reps have an
incredible drive to sell you what you will pay for NOW (= commission).

You may have to call back several times, but you will probably find an
M70 from Dell with warranty & Complete Care available. You might even
be able to put it on a monthly pay plan to ease the bite, though I
haven't checked that.

The M70's are a damn good machine for SolidWorks, and at nearly half of
what a fully loaded M90 would set you back.

Bo

 

Pricing a D820 and M90 side by side doesn't show much difference in
price.

Some options are different, but that's about it.

Interesting.

I still think I'ld try to find an M70 refurb for half the price of a
noe D820 or M80.

Bo

 

I guess it depends on "best for what". As TOP mentioned, if you're
looking for best performance, there are specific things you should look
for. If you're looking for portability (weight, size), you aren't
going to get something that's blazing fast. Battery life also is at
the expense of performance.

I got a Hypersonic Aviator FX7 with an AMD 64 X2 4800+, and it rivals
nice desktop machines for SolidWorks rebuild times. But there are draw
backs, such as:

- very heavy
- 45 minute or less battery life
- gets pretty warm
- fans (4 of em) can be loud

There are several manufacturers that make similar systems, as someone
else has mentioned. Probably the most popular is the Alienware, but
when I bought this a few months ago, the Hypersonic was the least
expensive - $3300 with a small but fast hard drive (90 Gb 7200 rpm
SATA), no bluetooth, but a webcam and mic, no built in wireless, using
a pcmcia, 2 Gb RAM, 1 DVD drive, Quadro Go FX 1400, 17" 1920x1200
display (very nice), full size keyboard including num pad (I hate
having a computer without a num pad). If you go nuts with the options
you could easily spec a $5000 laptop. Because of the weight, this is
not something you look sexy with at a coffee shop, but it is easily
something that can completely replace a desktop, and you'd never miss a
step in the speed.

Dell is of course the safe choice. I've had other Dells and they work
fine, but this goes the extra step.