More Laptop Dithering

[jyl]

Need some laptop advice from the brain trust.

My son is starting in the undergrad architecture program at University Of Oregon this fall. The department requires each student to have a laptop meeting certain minimum specs. They need to run AutoCAD, Rhino, Photoshop, etc.

I've spec'd out a Thinkpad P52 workstation that looks like it should handle anything he could need for the whole five year program. i8 quad-core, Nvidia Quadro 2000 graphics, 64 GB RAM with room for 128 GB, 512 GB SSD with more two drive slots free, 4K 15" screen, etc. It'll cost about $3,600 and is a tank.

Hmm. It really will be a tank. Like big and heavy. Like the bad old days of laptop bulk and weight.

The Thinkpad P1 thin and light workstation can be spec'd for a similar price to about 70% as much oomph. It maxes at 64 GB RAM, only has two drive slots, doesn't have near as much heat dissipation ability, etc. But it'd be a much more portable machine. Like, if you're not actually an architecture student it'd be all the laptop you need. And if you are an architecture student it'd be adequate but maybe not perfect.

Here's the thing. I'm not confident he'll actually stick with the architecture program. He's not a kid who has been dreaming about designing buildings his whole life. He's also interested in product design and marine biology, and who knows what else he might get into.

Should I buy the P52? Or buy the P1 and potentially have to spring for a better laptop or maybe a desktop later?

[island911]

Both?

A strong GPU helps presentations immensely.

Portability is great for students.

A portable unit can always VPN to the power house.

[JavaBrewer]

I would go for portability all day long. If he finds it lacking in HP spring for a desktop to do the hard stuff, though I would bet 99% of the time the lower spec unit will be just fine.

[stomachmonkey]

That 1st box you spec'd will probably chew through a freshly charged battery before it finishes booting.

Any of those apps you listed will hum along fine on 16GB of ram, 32'd be better, you don't need 64 or more.

The only things you should be focusing on are CPU, GPU and usability.

How much of his work will be split between classroom and his dorm room?

Get him a kitted out Surface Pro for class and a desktop for the dorm.

You'll spend the same coin and he'll be happier and more productive.

[red-beard]

Get the workstation. And budget for an extra screen for his dorm

The heat dissapation is a good thing. And he can carry the laptop, it will not kill him. My first laptop was over 8 pounds (Toshiba 1200 80C86 with harddrive).

My heaviest was 12 pounds (work supplied 286 clamshell). What a piece of junk! We were given an external CD drive and you had to play games with the RAM loading to run Windows 1.0 to make it work...

[ian c2]

I mis-read the title and thought this thread was about lap-dancing .
Sorry , but I have no advice to offer on your computer problems .

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

That 1st box you spec'd will probably chew through a freshly charged battery before it finishes booting.

Any of those apps you listed will hum along fine on 16GB of ram, 32'd be better, you don't need 64 or more.

The only things you should be focusing on are CPU, GPU and usability.

How much of his work will be split between classroom and his dorm room?

Get him a kitted out Surface Pro for class and a desktop for the dorm.

You'll spend the same coin and he'll be happier and more productive.

RAM is cheap. But I agree with S-M. A powerful desktop and a decent laptop might be the better idea.

A really good Thinkpad Carbon X1 is about $1500. For $2000 you can do a killer desktop. My last build is still strong after 5 years.

[LWJ]

Used? I bought eBay thinkpads for 4/5 of my family. Cheap. Warranty. Work great.

Can you meet the spec with second hand?

[Bill Douglas]

Yep, if you have SSD you don't need that much RAM. Doing architecture maybe a 17" screen would be more suitable.

[ian c2]

Uh ??

[jyl]

Hmm. There is a P72 workstation with 17" screen. But I'll just give him an external monitor for big screen work.

Lots to mull over. In the old days there weren't these questions. Just abacus or fingers.

[Bill Douglas]

I know what you mean!!! The laptop I'm sitting in front of right now is a Toshiba with 17" and it seems so much bigger than a 15". You might say whats another couple of inches :blush: but it makes a lot of difference in a graphical environment. Not everything will be on the big screen such as when in class. I got my art school kid niece a 17" laptop when I bought mine and she got a lot of use out it at art school.

I'm looking at buying as big as I can laptop (desktop replacement they called them at one time) but I wouldn't have a clue in hell what to buy. Lenovo thinkpad you say.

[KFC911]

Once upon a time....long ago...

Ask Sid

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by ian c2

I mis-read the title and thought this thread was about lap-dancing .
Sorry , but I have no advice to offer on your computer problems .

This is OT....what about lap dancing ?

[stomachmonkey]

I used to carry 17in laptops.

No more.

I've got 35in super wide displays on my desk at home and in the office to plug into and when I'm traveling for a few days and need to work I carry a 17in AOC portable display.

Video is fed via USB.

They are cheap and light.

Combined weight of that and 15 in laptop is less than a 17 and dual displays gives you a ton more real estate.

[svandamme]

I hate working on laptops for any kind of serious work.
Give me a desktop any time, faster, less noise, bigger disks, more screens for my money

[legion]

Wait, there are i8 processors?

I bought a nice refurbished HP with an i7 8th gen, 32gb of ram, 2tb HD, and a nice Nvidia video card for around $800 a few months ago.

[GH85Carrera]

We have a Ailenware "laptop" that is a monster. It has two video cards, 4 hard drives, and only Andre the Giant cuold fit on his lap with an way to shield the heat.

Go for all the memory you can stuff in there, and lots of hard drive space. We generate huge 3dml files and point cloud files, as in gigabytes. If he is trying to edit or work with large files, he will want all the memory he can get. We have one 128 GB ram computer that pegs out the ram on occasion. Memory is cheap and no one ever said "I have too much RAM or hard drive space".

Files will only get bigger and more complex in the future.

And I totally agree with the desktop advice. Laptops suck to work with as a workstation. At least get a separate monitor and keyboard for the laptop, but a desktop for real work and a the laptop for transportability is the way to go. And lock it down with strong passwords to use it.

[svandamme]

i8's bleh , i9's !!

[svandamme]

oh and check out the chipsets , and make sure the mother board has 4 channels

You want motherboard 2x 4 memory banks
Not 2x2 or 2x3..

2x4 means you slap in 4x32GB for 128 on 4 channels
MORE cpu to memory bandwith.

Especially problematic on laptops.. they may have the chip, they may have the Iwhatever core
IF the memory channels aren't there, it will run slower then the desktop.


To give you an idea, my main pc is from 2008, a dell studio xps with a core i7
Then it was a super deal, because it had 2x3 slots, 3 channels

most core i7's sold from 2008 till 2014 only had 2 channels.. they were all pigs.
This 11 year old machine still works fine for most games and what not.
Sure i upgraded it's videocard, and raid 0'ed 3 SSD's for hdd throughput