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.

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:



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: )

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!



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