Thanks to Chickensoup for the ping!!
Posted on 06/08/2016 6:19:23 AM PDT by freedumb2003
I am about to embark on a career as an Independent Contractor -- I am a computer consultant (37 years) in the ERP space.
I have some pretty good laptops now but I really think I need a high-powered, high-performance Wintel laptop. I would like to keep it at 15" to take with me, although I have a Surface (which I like but has idiosyncrasies) I use for mobility.
This is business, not gaming (which I eschew), so I don't think Alienware and its derivatives are what I am looking for.
Panasonic Toughbook
If anything goes wrong, one day turn around.
” high-powered, high-performance Wintel laptop”
Why? What will you be running on it that requires all that processing power?
Gaming also bumps up the weight.
Buy a $500 laptop AMD APU. It will do everything you want it to do. I bought an A6 with a dedicated video card for $500. I could play Call of Duty on it.
When it comes to laptops, quality of construction is the primary thing you should consider.
For Win machines, I nearly always choose Lenovo.
The connectors inside laptops are so fragile that HOW its designed is an important factor.
CAD CAM FEA guy here. Very intensive graphics as well as processing power needed. I have always used Dell mobile work stations. Heavy big but fast and reliable. Money is not a concern when the software is tens of thousands and you get no support if you don’t have an approved computer.
Thanks to Chickensoup for the ping!!
That’s what I’m currently running. CF-53 with a 256gig SSD and 16gig RAM. I have one onboard VM and I use an external HDD for the others (slight performance hit but tolerable for my needs).
Brightest screen on the market and I can work out in the weather without worry.
>>Why? What will you be running on it that requires all that processing power?<<
Stand-along versions of enterprise software and probably Virtual machines (very performance sucking).
Lots of great ideas on this thread! I knew I could depend on my FRiends!
Tell that to IBM which is installing 2500 Apple Macs per week in it's business, and saving big bucks in IT and tech support, FreeDumb. You can run Windows on Mac hardware in a sandbox far more safely than you can on a purely Windows box. . . and getting an infected Windows install back up and running is far easier on the Mac because you can simply replace an infected virtual drive image file with a clean replacement in a couple of minutes and be back up and running. — PING!
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Just bought the wife a 13” Retina Display Macbook Pro, loaded (16GB RAM, 1TB Fusion drive).
I am in the middle of installing VMWare Fusion and will migrate her old Windows 7 laptop to it. She will then be able to run her digitizing software (Windows only) at the same time as OS X, where she has everything else.
This is easily the fastest laptop I have ever worked with. There is something cool about being able to close a laptop and open it hours later (or days) and have it be instantly exactly where you left it.
I spent way too much on it, but it was part of a lease package. Apple has a GREAT leasing promotion going on. I am getting well over $10,000 worth of equipment for $209 per month, 36 months, with a $235 buy out at the end.
When I configured the HP to the same specs as my wife’s new Macbook Pro the price was almost identical.
Two differences - my wife got the 1 TB drive and the best the HP could do was 512 GB and the HP has a 14” screen compared to the Macbook Pro 13” screen.
Well, do you want Wintel or Mac?
If you don’t care, then go with the Mac.
If you need Windows for the development environment, then get the Wintel box.
However, for just an extra $100, you can get W10 home edition and run it as a virtual guest on your Mac box.
With Virtualbox, you can do that seamlessly. In seamless mode, both the Mac and Windows desktops are active at the same time. You can run windows apps on your Mac desktop right next to your Mac apps.
I have found ASUS support to be rather lacking. Their products very hit-or-miss - you get a very solid device (tablet or laptop) one time, then a real dud the next.
Regardless of one’s brand preference, or even OS preference - the same rules apply:
- Fastest/latest processor available (Skylake i7 being the obvious choice right now)
Max Ram machine can use/you can afford. 16GB is not hard or expensive to come by and the more you have, the better for every conceivable reason.
- Storage: SSDs are “all the rage”, but as others have posted, can be problematic in some regards. Hard to beat the speed of them, but reliability is not 100% One thing for certain - don’t under-guess your storage needs. I just plain wouldn’t buy a laptop with less than 1TB drive - and bigger, again, is better for many reasons. 7200rpm preferred. (and/or SSD/HD hybrid drive...but again, some concerns).
- Video - a real graphics card with its own memory is preferable to “shared memory” of the lower end machines (but this isn’t near the limitation it once was).
Stick with the above and you should be good.
I use VMWare Fusion for the same thing.
Fusion actually has three modes:
1. You can run Windows full screen and not see OSX at all
2. You can run Windows in a Window. I use this with dual monitors - I run Windows on one monitor and OSX on the other.
3. You can run Windows in Unity mode. In this mode Windows programs appear as icons in OSX and all of the Windows stuff is in the background.
Peripherals are seamlessly shared between operating systems. You can reconfigure the Windows side to use more or less RAM, more or fewer cores, and even adjust the hard drive space used. I can even drag and drop from one operating system to the other.
I have discovered that Windows runs very fast on Macs. I still need a Windows box to run one specialized t-shirt printer, but we have migrated all of our other computers to Macs with Windows available under Fusion “just in case”.
I’m going to have to agree with Swordmaker.
Even if you want a pure Wintel notebook, you’re going to find that in the high power range that the Retina Macbook Pro isn’t going to be beaten in price or performance. Also, if it needs to be serviced in the future, your rescuers are as close as the nearest Apple Store. Won’t be so with a Lenovo or Samsung.
If you’re prepared to spend $2300-$2500 on a new high end notebook and don’t get the rMBP, you chose poorly -— even if your intent was to wipe the disk clean and install Windows 10. Plenty of people do that, by the way. Of course, I wouldn’t wipe the disk clean of OS X. but instead run Win10 in a virtual machine.
Probably better do some research, Freedumb2003. Let it be recorded that I tried to help.
OK — food fir thought and research.
I haven’t seen Apple emulating Wintel substituting for Wintel iron in the Fortune 50 companies I have worked with over the last decade (hell, some of the apps I work with don’t even play well with Citrix or VMs) but I will do follow-up due diligence.
I disagree. My desktop ASUS is so powerful it can power NASA.
If you have an old laptop sitting around, turn it into a Chromebook for free. I had an old Dell Inspiron 1545 that I had upgraded the hardware to a Core Two Duo T9500 with 8gb memory and a 120gb SSD hard drive. Upgraded it to a Chromebook with free software at the link below and I am very pleased. Runs really fast. Soon will also run android apps when Google releases an update.
Neverware - CloudReady Chromebook software for USB stick
http://www.neverware.com/#introtext-3
I also have a Dell Inspiron 5737 17” i5 4520m with 8gb ram and 250gb SSD drive that I have a dual boot with Windows 10, Ubuntu Linux and Linux Mint.
These two laptops meet all my needs.
I’m a Dell person too.
HP and Compaq I avoid and don’t recommend.
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