Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
(OP)
When running SolidWorks 2003,what is the best laptop for the money? How should it be configured? Does anyone have any suggestions? I need a portable workstation to use when traveling and at customer sites.






RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
Hello,
I like these ones...
IBM ThinkPad A30P with an ATI Mobility FireGL 7800
Dell Precision M40 with a nVidia Quadro 2Go
Dell Precision M50 with a nVidia Quadro 500 GoGL
The problem with most laptops is that they have "gaming" video cards. What you want is a video card designed for CAD.
The Quadro and FireGL are excellent CAD cards and the laptops above have them.
Cheers,
Joseph
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
Wanna Tip? FAQ731-376
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
One problem I heard about the M50 was that when the laptop is closed the keys touch the screen
have fun make money
Paul
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
I looked at the Alienware site and this laptop is about $1000 cheaper!!! But... when I checked the ATI card out on the SW approved list, none of the ATI cards passed!
I'm going to call both Dell, beat them up on price, and Alienware and see if the nVidia 128 meg card can be configured. The Pentium 4, 3.06 processor should run faster then the Pentium M 1.70.
have fun make money
Paul
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
Let us know how you get asking Alienware getting the nVidia card configured - am sure a few people round here (myself included) would be very interested.
Dave
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.html
Regards,
Scott Baugh, CSWP

3DVision Technologies
http://www.3dvisiontech.com
http://www.scottjbaugh.com
FAQ731-376
When in doubt, always check the help
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
have fun make money
Paul
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
the laptop is a standard 3.06 gigahertz chip not a mobile chip with an ati card now ive always shyed away from ati based on what it says in the solidworks support guide about them having problems and from experience having had ati radeons and fire gls in workstation so i was pretty surprised when i loaded 2003 on the laptop plugged the hasp dongle in and low and behold better performance than we could have expected WE WERE GOING FOR DELL M50S but found a suitable replacement with similar power to a workstation
just for a laugh we tryed to load a big assy on it
with around 200 parts and even more surprising
the radeon card seems to work with solidworks no probs ok maybe a bit slower but not that noticably (absolutely shocked we were)
Now if it was me,and based on previous experience, weve had dells and sgi to name a few and also built our own the main thing comes to whatlevel of support you need from the manufacturer this is what you pay for not the components the machine is built from
my advice shop around and see if you can try before you buy any reputable reseller with any faith in what they are selling should let you do this
you may be pleasantly surprised
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
If you go to http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/videocardreport.html and click on IBM you will see SW has listed the ATI Mobility Radeon as a passing card. But that card is or was at that time located in the IBM's. They maybe located in other laptops today.
Glad to see your happy with your purchase!
Regards,
Scott Baugh, CSWP

3DVision Technologies
http://www.3dvisiontech.com
http://www.scottjbaugh.com
FAQ731-376
When in doubt, always check the help
RE: Which Laptop is best for SW 2003?
theres no chance of us changing to ati the fx2000s work just fine for us I was just surprised that after the hammering ati have had that solidworks will now run on it with few problems
and on a budget laptop too
one thing though those 3 gig chips get really hot in confined spaces