laptop for solidworks

Don't buy any laptop without the high-end nVIDIA card.

Only a few brands support the card. Searching this group will turn up comments on Boxx, Sager, Alienware, and Dell.

I use a Dell M60 (current model = M70) because their Complete Care gives me 24 hour turnaround on fixes for 3 years, and they have lived up to their service claims (& on my earlier Dell laptop, too). Other guys want to save some money.

Bo

Well, I should give you an update on that Boxx. It did seem to be faster than the common high end laptop, but in the end, it was too finicky to really use. I wound up sending it back to Boxx. The company seriously recommended that you NOT run Windows Updates or update the video driver because it could (and did) leave the system in an unusable condition.

I couldn't get it set up and stable in a way that I wanted to work. The first problem is that it couldn't read from my external floppy because it had card readers on it. So I got another floppy drive. Then the machine wouldn't boot if I installed ANYTHING. I could boot in safe mode and do an upgrade, and then I was ok until I installed something else.

Plus, changing the Hyperthreading setting seemed to require a reinstallation of the OS. Same problems with two different hard drives, but I lost my patience before they could swap out the motherboard. Anyway, they were honorable about it and credited me full price to a tower. Of course $4k buys a pretty screaming tower, so I'm not too upset.

The M70 is probably the safe choice. The Sager, Alienware, Eurocomm, Hypersonic, Boxx and a couple others are all built on the same platform with the same components, and I'd be leary of any of them after my experience.

Matt

I can recomend the dell M70. We are running 3 of them and have had no problems so far. The only problem you will encounter is the dongle. We had to swap out our dongles for USB versions and our VAR wanted to charge us £135 each to do so. We eventually managed to get a reduction in next years subscription charge...not a perfect solution, but not too bad either.

Also, try to get a discount from them. We recently bought a Dell PDA, and without too much trouble, managed to get a reasonable price reduction just by asking!

Regards Gary

I just purchased a new Dell M70. I recommend it. Not blazing fast, but much more customizable than my last Dell desktop 5 years ago. I had only 2 issues, a missing AC adapter and a cosmetic defect in the lid. I had replacements the next day.

Best Regards, Devon T. Sowell