Still poking along with SW03, heard a lot of chatter about speed issues with 04. Haven't really paid much attention with 05 yet. about ready to make the jump, but I also need to get a laptop for some presentations type stuff. Is a 2.2Ghz P4 with decent graphics (nvidia) going to keep up with 2004 or 2005?
ca
Running SWks 2004 & latest SP on my Dell M60 (Centrino) is smoooooth. Video card is no problem, even with a couple dozen windows open for an assembly.
You want Bluetooth built-in. Being able to do PC to PC or PC to Mac file transfers quickly and seamlessly without interrupting other network connections is a real plus. Bluetooth can also send and receive email (& web pages on a browser if you have mucho patience) with a typical BT enabled Cellphone. I pay an extra $3-5/mo for 9600 baud connection on my standard cellphone account (not the typical $79 for high speed).
The M60's 1900 pixel across screen may seem to be too high in resolution, but it makes for great 3D solids CAD work and image look. You couldn't get me to go back down to 1400 or 1600 pixels.
I haven't seen anything negative with the M60 except the overly hard activation of the thumb keys for left and right mouse buttons under the space bar. Same buttons below the trackpad are fine. I use a USB or BlueTooth 3 button mouse with it anyway.
I am one who believes you want to see SolidWorks actually running on a machine you are going to buy BEFORE you plunk the money down, unless it is a company who will guarantee they'll take the laptop back if you don't like it. I think a user here mentioned that CostCo or Staples had a 6 month no questions asked return policy.
Contact your local VAR to see what they use, since many of their guys have laptops.
Bo
A Dell M60 is going to be "significantly" faster than say a Dell 8200 at
2.2 Ghz.I more interested in hearing form users that have some experience with
2004/2005 running on an older laptop. Is it still usable, presentable? I'm not going to spend 3K+ for a laptop I only need to use 2-3 times a month.ca
Bo wrote:
I also keep my old 1 ghz P3 Inspiron 8000 with a 32 meg nVIDIA GF2Go (or whatever it was) video card & Win2000 as a backup.
SolidWorks 2004 runs on it nicely for my small "things". When I get to an assembly with a dozen to 2 dozen parts the display rotation times get jerky and then looooong as the numbers of parts go up. Indeed it was the slow rotations of complex parts and assemblies that forced me into buying an M60.
In round numbers, the open times on the Inspiron 8000 vs the M60 w/WinXP are not too much different and that surprises me. Rotations on the I8000 with a 8 parts in one of my assemblies is twice as long as the M60 (same angular rotation increment).
I still consider the Inspiron 8000 OK for doing individual parts and small assemblies, but your reaction to the speeds will depend on your use with your parts.
Bo
My wife brought her laptop home from work one day last week - it is an ACER 1714smi and I loaded sw2005 onto it to see how it went - It work fine, except no 'real view' as the nvidia card was a Geforce of some sort. My memory fails me on the exact one.
I got quite jealous.
I f I remember correctly her work only paid something like £1,000 for it. It has a 17" screen and came with 1gb of memory. Not the most portable laptop, more a moveable desktop system.
There must be an equivalent in the US. I think the price was quite good because this model is being replaced. Perhaps it is the same in the US.
This could be a good alternative to the M60. Perhaps others have tried ACER laptops and have further opinions.
Regards
Jonathan Stedman
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