Laptop recommendations for SolidWorks

[MrClean]

I'm in the market for a new laptop, hopefully for $1,600 or less, and hopefully with Windows XP. I'll be running primarily Internet browsers, email clients, SolidWorks 2006, AutoCad, MSWord, and Excel. My SolidWorks activities tend to be on the light end of the spectrum.

I understand that the preferred graphics adapters for SolidWorks are the nvidia Quadro FX series. Laptop offerings other than Dell with these adapters are pretty slim. As time goes on, I hear more and more bad things about Dell, so I'm inclined to stay away from them. I came across the HP EliteBook 8540W, which has an nvidia Quadro FX graphics adapter, and looks promising. I'd be interested in hearing about anyone's experience with this machine, good or bad, as well as any relevant comments about Dell and other makes of laptops for use with SolidWorks.

Question: will SW 2006 run under Windows Vista? ... Windows 7? How about Office 97?

 

[ctopher]

Check out the info here:
faq559-974

Also:

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/videocardtesting.html

Chris
SolidWorks 09 SP4.1
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[Burrell]

Can't give answers for the many PC brands, but I do like my 15" i7 MacBook Pro which runs an nVIDIA DForce 330 and has not had any video issues to date. I ran Dell laptops in the past, but the high end Dell machines are still up around $6000 including tax, and my 15" MBPro was down around $3000 with tax, and I don't think it is any slower.

A Dell i7 4500 workstation laptop @ 2 GHz does not match the MacBook Pro at 2.66 GHz.

Running on a Mac does involve minor compromises that many people won't want to make, such as a different keyboard layout, though you can plug in an external PC keyboard (I use a small one at times). I never found it a problem to adjust to keyboards and move back and forth to an earlier Dell when I need to do it without problem.

Running SolidWorks 2010 in Win7 64 bit. Was a breeze to create the Windows partition with Boot Camp Assistant, and then reboot into the Win7 DVD to install. SolidWorks 2010 is even easier to install. Win7 & MSOffice 2007 each took a couple dozen updates, but those are painless.

It is even better if you put in a solid state drive as any PC or Mac laptop as it will basically boot and do heavy tasks about twice as fast and in some cases 3-5 times as fast with some of my backup programs.

Swks 2006: I don't know if you can even get 2006 to register with Swks to get a 'code' to allow it to run through SolidWorks at this point. If you can, it would be XP Pro only.

Vista: Don't be a masochist. OK, I am being too tough. Stick with XP Pro or go to Windows7.

MSOffice: 97? Again, for keeping up with the Jones's in engineering, just get MSO 2007 and move on into the 21st Century. Yeah, I dislike the MSO look and the new Win7 compared to XP Pro, but you get used to it.