Which laptop?

[kalniel]

Hi all, I'm trying to spec a laptop for work fairly urgently (sadly, or could wait for more Ryzen stuff). Sadly the uses are not best suited to a laptop, but there you go. They will be:

-Running virtual machines (with various scientific softwares within, doesn't have to be super speedy though, heavy crunching should be done on the data centres)
-Screen cast/webinar recording, editing and rendering
-Fair amount of content production, mostly text, but some graphics/photo work
-Lots of travelling to conferences etc.

Yes, I know, the 'needs to do everything' thing really From those requirements I'm aiming for something like:

-Quad core CPU (intel 7th gen i7 HQ or 8th gen i7)
-16 GB RAM
-As good a GPU as I can get away with.
-Good keyboard
-As compact, light as possible
-As good a battery life as possible
-SSD of at least 256GB. Don't really need /huge/ storage as should be offloading media work once done.

as far as budget.. I've not been given a figure, I just have to apply and see what happens, so as low as possible, or a range, would be good.

So far I've found:
*MS Surface book 2, upper 13.5" models - very good fit, but expensive
*Dell XPS 15 9560 - looks good on paper.. suspiciously. Work have taken to dropping support for XPS I think as too much hassle.
*Dell Inspiron 15 7577 - Undoubtably most powerful, but drawing too much juice from mediocre battery? Bit gamey too.

Thanks in advance

[Millennium]

People complain that the top end GPU laptops are all gamer-esque. Will follow this thread with interest (hence the reply?!)

[Pob255]

Actually I'd question the need for gpu most of that is more cpu bound, a gpu can speed it up but only over and about the cpu

"webinar recording, editing and rendering" might be a bit storage hungry not sure 256gb will be enough will depend on software load and other local storage demands, yes you'll be off loading the media but you'll need the space to record and edit it first.

If you get a surface book2 squeeze in a pen as well, that will make it great for photo/image editing work

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What kind of budget are we talking about??

Can you get the Apple educational discount??

[Millennium]

edIT: sorry posted a desktop deal lol!

[scaryjim]

I'm on a Lenovo Thinkpad T460p currently with basically those exact specs & requirements - i7 HQ, GeForce 940MX, 16GB, 512GB SSD, compact & light enough to comfortably carry a couple of miles between sites during a workday.

The current gen (T470p) specced equivalently but with a 256GB SSD is just under £1200 direct from Lenovo. For a buysiness machine it gets aheart recommendation from me - right up there with the Dell Latty I had ~ 5 years ago for both performance and portability.

[kalniel]

Actually I'd question the need for gpu most of that is more cpu bound, a gpu can speed it up but only over and about the cpu

Yes, GPU is a secondary concern - it might come in handy for some structure rendering stuff - at the moment I can thin client from a GPU farm but I'm not sure how long we'll have that.

What kind of budget are we talking about??

Can you get the Apple educational discount??

Yes I can get the ed discount, but even so I think the only macs with discrete graphics are as much as the surface book 2 which I'd get in preference. I don't know about budget.

I'm on a Lenovo Thinkpad T460p currently with basically those exact specs & requirements - i7 HQ, GeForce 940MX, 16GB, 512GB SSD, compact & light enough to comfortably carry a couple of miles between sites during a workday.

The current gen (T470p) specced equivalently but with a 256GB SSD is just under £1200 direct from Lenovo. For a buysiness machine it gets aheart recommendation from me - right up there with the Dell Latty I had ~ 5 years ago for both performance and portability.

Nice call - I was searching Lenovo and couldn't find anything remotely suitable, but that (+a config change) is perfect.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yes I can get the ed discount, but even so I think the only macs with discrete graphics are as much as the surface book 2 which I'd get in preference. I don't know about budget.

I was just asking since when I last worked at a uni,there used to be some very good discounts on the MacBooks and hence they used to be quite popular in a number of departments.

Ok,one thing Kalniel,Intel is meant to launch CFL for laptops at some point,so that does mean 6C/12T CPUs too:

https://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/1125...ore-i9-8950hk/

Regarding the XPS range - a mate who still works in Academia(probably not far from you),uses an XPS13 for the stuff you said you are doing with it and so far seems OK with the general performance.

I would probably try to prioritise cooling and build quality over out and out speed,and some of thinner laptops cut down on both due to the form factor.

[scaryjim]

... Nice call - I was searching Lenovo and couldn't find anything remotely suitable, but that (+a config change) is perfect.

Thanks, but it wasn't actually my call - centralised purchasing meant I had to have a Thinkpad, and the p variant was the only one that would realistically cope with me running 2 or 3 VMs concurrently for development & testing. And getting the non-standard spec past purchasing was it's own special kind of hell!

But yeah, they're good machines. Only downside with mine was that they replaced the pre-installed Windows 10 with the standard Windows 7 image...

[Ryan_Stevens]

I would suggest you opt for MSI GL62M 7RE-407 or Acer Aspire VX15 gaming laptop under $1000 from the list mentioned here: https://www.reviewsdir.com/best-gami...ps-under-1000/ Both have got Nvidia GTX 1050Ti builtin, which is good enough to run most of the high-end gaming titles too. I am using Acer Aspire VX15 for 6 months now and have played COD and Battlefield online without hiccups.

[scaryjim]

... I'm trying to spec a laptop for work ...

... the uses ... will be:

-Running virtual machines (with various scientific softwares within, doesn't have to be super speedy though, heavy crunching should be done on the data centres)
-Screen cast/webinar recording, editing and rendering
-Fair amount of content production, mostly text, but some graphics/photo work
-Lots of travelling to conferences etc.

...

I would suggest you opt for MSI GL62M 7RE-407 or Acer Aspire VX15 ... Both have got Nvidia GTX 1050Ti builtin, which is good enough to run most of the high-end gaming titles too. ...

Gaming not really high up the list of the OP's requirements there, is it?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What about those new Intel parts with the integrated Vega graphics?? They will probably tick all the boxes??

[kalniel]

Order already went in for the Lenovo T470p, but admin are dragging their feet so will see if anything comes out before they get it together.

[keston]

I recommend Dell XPS 15.

[rborge]

Nice choice. T470p has good specs, though battery life isn't the best.