Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?

[skiking]

When running SolidWorks 2003,what is the best laptop for the money? How should it be configured? Does anyone have any suggestions? I need a portable workstation to use when traveling and at customer sites.

 

[josephv]

Hello,

I like these ones...

IBM ThinkPad A30P with an ATI Mobility FireGL 7800
Dell Precision M40 with a nVidia Quadro 2Go
Dell Precision M50 with a nVidia Quadro 500 GoGL

The problem with most laptops is that they have "gaming" video cards. What you want is a video card designed for CAD.
The Quadro and FireGL are excellent CAD cards and the laptops above have them.

Cheers,

Joseph

 

[MadMango]

thread559-60484 This was discussed several weeks ago.

Wanna Tip? faq731-376
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

 

[whippet]

The Dell Precision M50 with the nVidia Quadro 500 GoGL only comes with 64 megs . The M60 has the 128 meg nVidia card .
One problem I heard about the M50 was that when the laptop is closed the keys touch the screen. But I also heard good reviews about Dell’s service plan when the screen needed to be replaced. I'm not promoting Dell and would like to find another vendor that supplies the better nVidia card , and need to before I make the laptop leap.

have fun make money
Paul

 

[Rocko]

you should look at Alienware

http://www.alienware.com.

Area-51m notebook . They put a true desktop pentium 4 cpu not a mobile in there laptops. ATI Mobility RADEON 9000 128MB DDR. They are the only ones putting out as standard a Hitachi 60GB 7200 RPM ATA100 with 8MB Cache. They are primarily marketed as the ultimate game machine but they are the only one i am aware of with a true desktop CPU in a laptop. I have a dell Inspiron 8200 and have been very happy with it so far.

 

[whippet]

Rocko,
I looked at the Alienware site and this laptop is about $1000 cheaper!!! But... when I checked the ATI card out on the SW approved list, none of the ATI cards passed!
I'm going to call both Dell, beat them up on price, and Alienware and see if the nVidia 128 meg card can be configured. The Pentium 4, 3.06 processor should run faster then the Pentium M 1.70.

have fun make money
Paul

 

[djw2k3]

Hi Paul,

Let us know how you get asking Alienware getting the nVidia card configured - am sure a few people round here (myself included) would be very interested.

Dave

 

[SBaugh]

I haven't used one of these myself, but I have some friends that use SW on them and they have some good luck with them.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.html

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[Rocko]

Now beware that the laptop from Alienware will run quite hot and i would not put it on your lap, you must also beware that it will cut into your battery time and cut it by almost half.

 

[whippet]

Laptops from Alienware only come with ATI vidio cards .

have fun make money
Paul

 

[z3bra]

Just an FYI, Sager Notebooks is the company that actually makes the Alienware Notebooks. Unless you really need a slime green colored plastic exterior and the "free" Alienware T-shirt, you will save a bunch of money buying the Sager instead of the Alienware equivalent. Doesn't solve the ATI only problem but it might make the price about $500-$1000 cheaper depending on the options you choose. The Sager 5670 series is the exact same thing as the Alienware Area51m. Take a look at them side by side. I believe that there are a couple of other computer "manufacturers" that rebadge Sagers as well.

 

[Rocko]

You can also pick up a used Inspiron8200 and buy the Nvidia Quadro4 700GoGL which will work with the Realview feature in SW2004. The card will fit in the 8200 model but not the newer 8500. This is the same card that is in the Dell M60 Cad portable workstations(laptop). Of course needless to say getting the video card is a little tough but you can save $1000.00 by doing it this way and you get a very good system.

 

[G1DESIGN]

heres a point of note having recently bought an off the shelf laptop from a local pc store it seems to me the only way to find out if something is fit for what you want is to try it out

the laptop is a standard 3.06 gigahertz chip not a mobile chip with an ati card now ive always shyed away from ati based on what it says in the solidworks support guide about them having problems and from experience having had ati radeons and fire gls in workstation so i was pretty surprised when i loaded 2003 on the laptop plugged the hasp dongle in and low and behold better performance than we could have expected WE WERE GOING FOR DELL M50S but found a suitable replacement with similar power to a workstation

just for a laugh we tryed to load a big assy on it
with around 200 parts and even more surprising
the radeon card seems to work with solidworks no probs ok maybe a bit slower but not that noticably (absolutely shocked we were)

Now if it was me,and based on previous experience, weve had dells and sgi to name a few and also built our own the main thing comes to whatlevel of support you need from the manufacturer this is what you pay for not the components the machine is built from

my advice shop around and see if you can try before you buy any reputable reseller with any faith in what they are selling should let you do this

you may be pleasantly surprised

 

[SBaugh]

G1DESIGN,

If you go to

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/videocardreport.html

and click on IBM you will see SW has listed the ATI Mobility Radeon as a passing card. But that card is or was at that time located in the IBM's. They maybe located in other laptops today.

Glad to see your happy with your purchase!

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[G1DESIGN]

thanks for the tip scott

theres no chance of us changing to ati the fx2000s work just fine for us I was just surprised that after the hammering ati have had that solidworks will now run on it with few problems
and on a budget laptop too

one thing though those 3 gig chips get really hot in confined spaces