Topic Title

I see the price of laptops dropping and wonder whether anyone can advise me on two things:
First - what is the minimum req. for a laptop to run Dcad Lt.
Second-is it possible to do any serious work on a laptop with a 15.4" screen (would like to work on the porch this summer instead of the office).
Third- can the full blown Dcad 11 be used on these machines.
Any advice would be much appreciated. I am looking to minimize the expense if possible.

I'm using a Dell Inspiron 9100, P4, 256M ram, 80g HD, WinXP and it works great for V11, but, on the porch? I don't know. The ambient light level may be too much for the screen to be usefully visible. If you are shaded and have a dark background behind you, the screen may be bright enough. Laptops are certainly powerful enough these days. My screen is 13" wide (1920 pixels) and 15.4" diag and works well for cad. I've heard since purchasing this that the P4 is not the best choice for processor because it tends to run warm. Others may have a better suggestion.

HP makes several laptops with 17" 1600x1200 LCD....and a true numerical pad like a "real" keyboard....the nx9600 and zd8600 series. For me, a dedicated and built-in numerical pad is essentail for dimensions and polar coords. I never just eyeball dimensions in CAD. What's annoying is the HP keeps shifting their product-lines and specs all-over the place. At one point they listed a 2000x1200 widescreen multimedia version at 17-inches.

As far as I've seen, HP's the only ones with built-in, full-size numerical pads.

I see the price of laptops dropping and wonder whether anyone can advise me on two things:
First - what is the minimum req. for a laptop to run Dcad Lt.
Second-is it possible to do any serious work on a laptop with a 15.4" screen (would like to work on the porch this summer instead of the office).
Third- can the full blown Dcad 11 be used on these machines.
Any advice would be much appreciated. I am looking to minimize the expense if possible.

First. Any new laptop will run Dcad LT.
Second. The 15.4" screen should be just fine. It is sure to have a resolution of 1024x768, the minimum you should coinsider in the 21st century, and it will very likely be better.
Third. It will run V11 just fine too. All you will miss out on is two screen operation, arguably V11's greatest asset but hardly sensible with a laptop.
If any programme is going to make life difficult on a laptop, it will be something other than DCad.

The only real disadvantages of a laptop are cost, screen size, upgradeability and ergonomics. For the last, you can use your desktop mouse and a separate numeric keyboard. As for the $$$$, you could always take the desktop outside onto the porch. With modern monitors, this has to be an increasingly viable proposition.

Greetings,

I'm considering a FIRST time purchase of a laptop (Not really a big fan).

Basically want to use for DataCAD, SketchUp and Word.

$ 1,000 - $ 1,500

The main questions that help you decide on what to buy, are how are you going to use it: all the time as a workstation, or, occasionally for presentations or trips, or, most of the time plugged into AC, or, most of the time on the battery? Is weight an issue?

I think that you should choose between a 15" screen and a 17" screen. (There is a difference in the weight of these units: 6+ pounds vs ~8 pounds.)

After that, I would look for a unit with 1GB of RAM -- this eliminates a fair number (many come with 512MB), and with the "right" unit you could upgrade it to 1GB.

I would tend towards getting a dual core CPU, but this is not critical. The Intel Core Duo is the most common dual core right now, but there may be a Core 2 Duo (newer generation and much more powerful) and possibly a few with AMD Turion 64 X2. Any of these three is excellent, both in computing power, and relatively good on battery life, too.

However, a Pentium M or Turion 64, or even an AMD Sempron would be fine, if you don't plan on using it that much and/or for just presentations.

Lastly, for better performance with SU, and to a lesser extent, DataCAD, I would look for a unit with separate video RAM. Most share the system RAM, but some have either completely dedicated video RAM, or have dedicated video RAM and the ability to dynamically use some system RAM in addition, when it is called for. Most use ATi video, or Intel video, and only a few use nVidia. I would choose the Intel video *last*; only if neither of the others were available.

Again, if this is to be used only occasionally, or just for presentations, then the dedicated video RAM may not be critical.

It is best if you can actually see the quality of the screen (many have the glossy "smoked" screens), and sometimes the placement of the CD drawer, or where it gets warm/hot, how many USB ports it has, number of cells in the battery, DVI and/or RGB slot, etc., matter enough to sway your decision. I'm partial to HP (or Compaq), but other brands are fine. My one beef with Acer is on many models, they format the HD with FAT32, rather than the more robust NTFS.

Hello,

Continuing from my post above...

The best mobile processors right now are Intel "Core 2 Duo" & "Core Duo" & AMD "Turion 64 X2". The single cores are also fine: AMD "Turion 64" & "Sempron", and Intel "Pentium M". Any of these will exceed the recommended SketchUp system.

I would get (at least) 1GB of RAM for sure. I would get a machine with separate video RAM, as well. I know that SU recommends nVidia video over ATi; but this means that you would have to ignore about 90% of all systems. ATi would work fine -- but having said that, you could start by looking here:

http://tinyurl.com/n3asd

and click the Customize button, and then add these upgrades:

Add the Turion 64 X2 TL-52, the 256MB nVidia GeForce Go 7200, 1GB DDR2 SDRAM, the "free" 80GB upgraded from 60GB, and the 12 cell Lithium Ion battery -- and the system totals $918.99. Not too shabby!

I'm looking for a new notebook and would appreciate any feedback and recommendations. Which (reasonably priced) notebook would you recommend?

My 7 years old Toshiba Satellite 14" used to run DataCAD fine, but - - it has truly become out of date by now, although I can say only good words about the computer's behaviour.

What do you think of HP NW8440 Intel Core Duo T2600 2,16GHz, 2G DDR2, 256MB ATI Mobility FireGL V5200, 15,4" 1920X1200 WUXGA (matte)? Does anybody have an experience? What can be the possible vices? How is the WUXGA working in reality? Shall I risk burning my fingers during rendering... (c: http://www.notebookreview.com/price/default.asp?productID=15833&productFamilyID=781&display=opinionDetail )

15,4" 1920X1200 WUXGA (matte)? Does anybody have an experience?

Unless you have very good eyes, I suggest you check that screen very carefully before you buy. I run 1280x1024 on a 21" screen and this resolution is more or less the norm an a 19" LCD. In the (ahem!) light of that, 1920 x 1200 on a little 15.4 screen seems an interesting exercise, but stretching the friendship.

Hello,

My wife has a Lenovo (IBM) laptop from work with that sort of resolution in a matte screen -- it is wonderful! The clarity is as good as any monitor I have ever seen -- and if the icons and text are too small, you can always increase their size w/o resorting to reducing the resolution. You should always run an LCD monitor at it's maximum/native resolution, and adjust the size of things with the Appearance settings.

To Nick: you're right! I was playing with the NW 8440 today and I'm not sure that the max resolution on 15" is best for the eyes - - WUXGA on 17" would probably be a better choice? (To Neil: what is the screen size of the Lenovo?)
...but there was another annoying thing with the computer - even with its 256Mb ATI and 2G RAM running a comparatively big o2c model was not as good as I expected (on my desktop with 128Mb Nvidia and 1G RAM I can turn and walk through the model much more smoothly) - every time I grabbed the model from a different point it took some time (2...3 seconds or so) for it to react - does anybody have an idea what may cause that?
... and NW8440 still started to produce some heat (not unbearably, but still..)
... and the fan was not the quietest either - -
- - so I'm back to where I started from...

Hello Marko,

The Lenovo is a 15" screen. By changing the Appearance settings to increase the icon and text sizes, but leaving the resolution at it's maximum/native setting -- you get the best of both!

The OpenGL driver for ATi is (probably) less than optimal, and/or the GPU may just have fewer pipelines, or slower clockspeed for the GPU and/or the video RAM --any or all of these will affect the 3D speed of the machine. nVidia is recommended by the folks at SketchUp, and ATi is not.

Greetings,

I figured that this might be useful here, as well as DBUG -- here's what I would consider when buying a laptop:

Can one find a suitable machine for around $1200? No AMD please, I’d prefer a [Intel Core 2 Duo] processor. Specs would be appreciated.

Yes, at the moment, AMD is not the performance "king", nor are they as efficient. Intel's Core 2 Duo is the top of the heap in laptops, and shares the best desktop performance with the Core 2 Quad machines. (BTW, "Core" is the name of the chip, like "Pentium" was, and Core 2 is the second generation, and Duo and Quad means they are dual or quad CPU's on the chip...)

Yes, certainly $1,200 will by you a very nice laptop -- even half of that is possible these days. I'll touch on some of the issues in choosing a laptop, rather than get too nitty gritty in the specs; because much of what you choose will be based on how you will use it.

If you can find a laptop that comes with WinXP, that is a very big plus -- however most will have Vista, which is unfortunate, for various reasons. Like the amount of RAM it requires: if you need 1GB in WinXP for good performance, then Vista will need 2GB. These are the minimums I would consider.

The second main choice you'll need to make is screen size vs weight: if you will be working on it a fair bit, and only transport it some of the time, you may want to get a 17" screen. If you need lighter weight because you're going to lug it around a lot, then 15" (or 14") might be a better compromise. Along the same lines, if it is mainly left on your desk, will you be connecting it to a second monitor? If so, then you may want to look for a model with a DVI (digital) output, so it will work better with a nice LCD monitor.

The third choice is between top performance vs battery life -- again, this will be based on whether you set it on a desk (and can plug it in) to use it, or whether you need better than say 2-3 hours of use on the battery alone. You can get optional larger capacity batteries, but this can only extend the time so much, when you have a more power-hungry CPU and GPU (video) in the machine. Some machines (Lenovo/IBM) have an optional second battery that slides into the optical drive bay (in place of the drive), for when you need more battery life.

The last "big" choice you have is the GPU (video) chip -- if you are working with large 3D models, then this can be worthwhile, but for "just" 2D DataCAD, then most middle-of-the-road video chips will be fine.

After these choices come things like hard drive size; and to a slightly lesser extent hard drive speed. If you plan to actually have this machine on your lap, then the amount of heat coming from the CPU and from the bottom of the unit in general is an important consideration.

For me, I would go for a WinXP machine with a 17" screen, 2GB of RAM, and at least a 120GB SATA 7200RPM hard drive, and a DVI output. I would spring for the largest battery they have available, too; but only to try and keep the time on the battery longer than an hour a few years down the road.

If I was forced to buy Vista (which you may have to do!) I would get 3GB RAM with a 32bit version of Vista, or 4GB with a 64bit version of Vista. (You must get a 64bit OS in order to use more than 3GB of RAM!)

Here's an HP machine that would fit the bill:
http://tinyurl.com/3f5fk6

...and a Lenovo machine:
http://tinyurl.com/4a3pxe

In addition to Neil's suggestions I would point out some more considerations (probably of less significance) while choosing a laptop:

- glaring display will show sharper picture, but in well lit room the reflections may become annoying after a while; so I would recommend a matte monitor;

- location of ports (my hp nw9440 has an audio and 2 of the 4 usb ports on the right side that makes them useless while working with the mouse);

- monitor size versus resolution (17" 1920x1200 wuxga is ok for cad, photoshopping and doing layout, but web surfing and text editing will be eye friendlier with "larger" pixels, say 17" 1680x1050 wsxga);

- and last not least - is it going to be a desktop replacement or a true laptop... (...and the corresponding meditation on weight, size, battery lifetime etc).

Another thought about laptops. If you are looking at a Tablet laptop (one that uses a digital pen), I would strongly recommend making sure that the tablet drivers are provided by Wacom (it is usually specified on the laptop). After using a few different types of Tablet laptops, I've found that the ones that use Wacom are by far the best (they're pressure sensitive and write a lot more smoothly).

Hello,

Those are all excellent points Marko -- buying a laptop is more complicated than buying a desktop computer, that's for sure. A couple of points that came up on the DBUG forum:

The 17" models I mentioned both have "full sized" keyboards, with the number pad on the right side. This makes them more useable for DataCAD.

I like the solid feel and more rigid frames that Lenovo's tend to have. They are very well made, in my experience.

This review of the Lenovo mentions that it can fit two hard drives, which is quite unusual!

http://compreviews.about.com/od/deskreplace/p/IdeaPadY710.htm

Q: has anybody on the forum bought a laptop with WinXP recently?