Xeon laptop?

[jyl]

Short version: I'm shopping for a laptop. I'm thinking of splashing out for a Xeon. Tell me I'm stupid and save me some money.

Long version: Laptop will sit on a desk, driving four external monitors (more would be nice). It might get moved between home office to office office, but it's not for a road warrior. It will be used for trading and investment stuff, so basically a local market quote-data-charting-app (Bloomberg type), a few web portal apps, a dozen or so browser tabs, some Excel workbooks of the few-thousand-rows with formulas-in-most-cells type, stream video in the background, miscellaneous business apps, etc. Not gonna render video, do CAD, or game. Some research suggests I need a decent discrete GPU, at least 16 GB RAM, a mid-range CPU, a 512 GB SSD or maybe two as RAID. The GPU requirement seems to put me at the border between business laptop and workstation laptop. The workstation models have the option of Xeon CPUs. I've never had a Xeon machine. Curiosity and the bigger-must-be-better mentality lures me to consider it. The added cost is not nothing but not prohibitive either. So WWYD?

Alt version: should I just forget the laptop and buy a desktop?

[RWebb]

might?

if P(moving) low, then execute desktop

[id10t]

Just for cost alone you could build 2 desktop systems just about for what the laptop would cost and have one at work and one at home. The two systems would end up being more due to monitor cost at the 2nd location.

For truly static things like always watching a specific page, etc a second, mini-computer like a Pi hooked up to a TV may be a good choice. This could be what is streaming news, etc. You can still "change the channel" etc. but it wouldn't be on your actual working system.

[jyl]

Oh, right, I could build a desktop or two!

I haven't built a PC in 15 years but I guess it can't have changed that much.

So I could build two desktops, the better one with all the monitors for office and a maybe-lesser one with just two monitors for home.

But then I have to have my files accessible to both machines, so either a cloud account or run a server? Will need security and I know nothing about that. I might have to hire an IT person to set it up..

Yes the NUC or Pi dedicated to streaming Bloomberg/CNBC/CNN makes sense. Keep that off the main PC.

[spuggy]

Originally Posted by jyl

Short version: I'm shopping for a laptop. I'm thinking of splashing out for a Xeon. Tell me I'm stupid and save me some money.
...
Alt version: should I just forget the laptop and buy a desktop?

Makes no sense to me to pay the premium for a Xeon laptop if you're not going to move it often. If you need CPU, buy a desktop with honking multi-core Xeons, and then buy a 17" laptop with a decent I7 for when you want to be mobile. Put lots of RAM into both and use SSDs.

If you don't have particular requirements for gaming, high-end CAD or rendering, then just about any recent GPU will be fine, so don't drop any extra cash for that.

As for more monitors, look at the ultra-wide (and curved) 38" or 49" monitors like the Dell U3818DW or U4919DW - as much real estate as a pair of big monitors close together but no bezel in the middle, and crazy cheap for what you get - the 5K 49" is cheaper than a pair of 30s cost a few years ago.

And a firestick/chromecast/NUC/pi driving a TV is a great idea (the devices built-in to TVs tend to age/stop getting updated really quickly, so just buy a half-decent TV with adequate # of HDMI ports).

[id10t]

Originally Posted by jyl

Oh, right, I could build a desktop or two!

I haven't built a PC in 15 years but I guess it can't have changed that much.

So I could build two desktops, the better one with all the monitors for office and a maybe-lesser one with just two monitors for home.

But then I have to have my files accessible to both machines, so either a cloud account or run a server? Will need security and I know nothing about that. I might have to hire an IT person to set it up..

Yes the NUC or Pi dedicated to streaming Bloomberg/CNBC/CNN makes sense. Keep that off the main PC.

Setting up a personal cloud server on a VPS from linode or some other trustworthy group and having it secure is fairly trivial to do ... PM me if you want more info

[Oracle]

Xenon is not battery friendly. It will kill it in no time.

[flipper35]

If you only need a mid-range CPU why bother with a Xeon CPU when an I7 or I9 would be a better fit for a laptop.

[jyl]

So the desktop idea is looking better and better, thanks for the info on the personal cloud server and I will PM you!

Just being lazy, I priced a SFF Lenovo Thinkstation at $2,617 with
Xeon E-2226G (3.40GHz, up to 4.70GHz with Turbo Boost, 6 Cores, 12MB Cache)
Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 64
4 X 16GB DDR4 2666MHz ECC UDIMM (doubt need this much but we're in a cheap RAM period)
2 X NVIDIA Quadro P1000 4GB (4xMini DP) Low Profile (can run up to 8 monitors!)
Boot SSD 256GB Solid State Drive, M.2, PCIe, Opal (I have no idea what "Opal" means)
RAID 0 with 2 x 512GB Solid State Drive, 2.5", SATA3, Opal (probably don't need this if I'm going to keep files on the cloud?)
Slim DVD Rambo 9.0mm Windows 10
Intel Wireless-AC 9560 2x2 AC, Bluetooth Version 5.0 Low Profile
Warranty 3 Year On-site (thinking I kind of want on-site service)

This is serious overkill for my needs but is nonetheless considerably less expensive than the workstation laptops I was looking at.

The monitors needn't be high-end as I don't see the need for particularly high-spec monitors for my needs, and I actually prefer more and smaller (27") monitors, to keep each application on its own screen.

Then a thin & light & not-expensive laptop with dual monitors for the home office.

[RWebb]

my files are accessible to all machines (including phone) but I switched to mac - either via Apple's Notes, or just clicking on the machine in the file facility (Finder)

I'm sure you could do the latter on networked Windows systems