The Best Laptop

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 =A31100, very nice.

steve

Wattsup wrote:

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

Lee Bazalgette - factorydesign wrote:

I spent the day meeting with a group of computer experts that are preparing a portable system of powerful computers that will be taken to Russia for some computationally intensive work. The system is being built with laptops made by Pro-Star Computer. I was told these laptops are extremely capable and places like Dell don't make anything comparable. The laptops are slightly larger than typical laptops, but the larger screens and full size keyboards made the units much nicer to use. The head programmer I met with today works exclusively on one of these laptops. The Pro-Star laptops might be worth considering for SolidWorks.

If anyone is interested, their web site is

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

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

I am using a Dell Latitude D810 for Wildfire and SolidWorks and it runs just as well as my work station. Another engineer has a M90 and there is no difference performance wise between the two (D810 & M90, other than the price!)

D810: 2.13 ghz mobile, 1 gig ram, Radeon X600 video, WinXP Professional

Or course, Wildfire is much faster than SolidWorks on everything other than simple parts and assemblies.

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.