laptop recommendation to run SW2008 and COSMOS

You might try searching the newsgroup. This question is ansered a lot. Why are you doing FEA on a laptop?

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Either the Dell Precision M90 or M4300 can be configured with XP 64- bit and 4GB RAM. With a 2.3GHz CPU, performance is not bad.

HP "supports" XP 64-bit on their newest mobile workstations (8710w &

8510w) which have the latest and greatest Intel mobile CPUs and nVidia graphics, but I haven't figured out how to order one with XP installed.

AFAIK, Lenovo doesn't support 64-bit Windows on any of the mobile systems.

XI and some other "boutique" manufactures have mobile workstations that use desktop processors, but none of these are tested or certified by SolidWorks. XI doesn't even offer the Quadro graphics as an option on their website anymore.

The one thing about laptops and FEA is that the hard drives are not all that fast.

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Be warned though that the chipset used in the M65, M90 and M4300 is limited to ~3.3GB of useable RAM regardless if you run 32 or 64 bit OS

Stephen.

Stephen - You're right - in the case of the M65 and M90. The new chipset in the M4300, 8710w, 8510w and newest ThinkPad T61p models will address the full 4GB with a 64-bit OS.

I *believe* that with the older systems, the video drivers will still run in the protected mode space above 3.3GB, making more memory available to applications. I'm not certain this is true, though.

As for the slower hard drives in mobile systems, this is also true, but the newest Seagate and Hitachi mobile drives have narrowed the gap considerably. As with CPU speeds, top mobile drive performance today is about equal to top dektop performance two years ago.

Are mobile systems the fastest for FEA - or anything else? No. Would I recommend a mobile system for complex nonlinear FEA or CFD? No. But can you do effective design validation using COSMOSWorks on a mobile computer? Absolutely!

Dell just announced the Precision M6300 - the replacement for the M90. It is based on the "Santa Rosa" chipset with 800MHz FSB and support for full 4GB RAM with 64-bit OS. It has the same Quadro FX

1600M graphics as the new HP 8710w. You can order it with up to a 2.8GHz CPU, which should be plenty fast.

It ain't cheap, though.

Read about it here: