Laptoopa advice - not for gamer

Shi · Post by **Shi** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:33 am

hmm guys,
seems many of ya know lots bout Laptops. I need an advice.
Wanna buy one, but not meant for gaming but for design stuff - aka Autocad app and such stuff, meant for architect person.
Not sure what would be the budget yet. It would adjust I guess according to what's available in the profile on the market.
I'm not looking tho for something top shelf, but more for sth just decent-good-vgood.
Good to not make a person freak out from slowness when working with graphical design stuff...

any advice ?

Ovi · Post by **Ovi** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:49 am

We use Dell Precision M65's for our higher end CAD work.

For general use and lower end CAD work we use latitudes, D620s at the moment.

I don't know how they compare to others on the market, I didn't spec them personally, but it might give you a basis to start from

For really high end stuff the M90 is probably the tool, but there is a fairly big jump in price between M65 and M90 I believe.

Post by **Xest** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:08 am

For professional graphics work you definitely want an nVidia card so the M65 is a good bet, Dell is pretty cheap also so it's probably the best price/performance option however you get what you pay for with Dell also, if the laptop develops problems and it's not being bought for someone who is part of a company that's a major Dell customer good luck getting the problem resolved in any reasonable timeframe (hell, even as a large corporate customer they've not been that helpful to us).

Essentially however, although Dell customer service and support is probably the worst of any company on the planet, what it comes down to is that there really isn't much choice other than Dell, particularly for getting a decent nVidia based laptop at a reasonable price. In other words the laptop market is pretty fucked up right now so that a company that probably should be one of the worst choices is in fact one of the best choices - you may get better service and support from other companies but the hardware tends to be worse, it's just a shame there doesn't seem to be a laptop supplier that gives good hardware AND good service/support right now.

Ovi · Post by **Ovi** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:20 pm

Our Dell support is starting to definitely improve from the lows of 6 - 12 months ago, still leaves a lot to be desired though.

HP might be worth looking at, their support has been very good on our servers, and I know one of the business groups here went for HP laptops a couple of years ago, because Dell couldn't provide what they wanted.

Post by **Xest** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:25 pm

Yeah HP is the only other direction I'd look. Their sales team loaned us a bunch of managed switches for a month so we could check them out and they actually knew what they were talking about, they had a full technical knowledge of the products in question so it was very encouraging. I've no idea what their after sales are like though.

Ovi · Post by **Ovi** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:28 pm

Just checked the HP website.... forget them... all ATI graphics, including the top end workstations!! They are good ATI graphics chipsets, but for approaching £2k ex VAT I would want to buy exactly what I want, and it wouldn't be ATI.

Ovi · Post by **Ovi** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:32 pm

Xest wrote:Yeah HP is the only other direction I'd look. Their sales team loaned us a bunch of managed switches for a month so we could check them out and they actually knew what they were talking about, they had a full technical knowledge of the products in question so it was very encouraging. I've no idea what their after sales are like though.

We mainly deal through a 3rd party company, who I have to say have been excellent.

The support is with HP direct on the Windows servers though and they have also been really good. The worst part if the first phone call, where you speak to someone with a non-English accent, to give a brief (one-line) description of the problem, the serial number of the machine and contact details.

Once the engineer calls you back though they have been really good every time.

The only comment I would have is that the level of service may be different on the laptops, we also have HP Support on our wide-format plotters, and the support there isn't quite so good. All faults fixed on first occasionally second visit, but getting them to come out can be tricky.

Post by **Lieva** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 6:50 pm

Xest wrote:Essentially however, although Dell customer service and support is probably the worst of any company on the planet, .

You can tell he suffored

Shi · Post by **Shi** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 6:19 am

thanks guys for info

Takitothemacs · Post by **Takitothemacs** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 7:04 am

Lieva wrote:You can tell he suffored

maybe so... but perhaps he wasn't aware that the big man is back in the chair at Dell... Michael Dell retook the role as chairman and his first act back in the chair... was to sack the senior management... things will get back to how they should be pretty quickly I reckon.