NEW DELL M70 LAPTOP

[bracin]

Hello everyone. I am new to this board. I currently use a dell m60 laptop for most of my modeling with the following hardware:
Processor: pentium m 1.7
memory: 1 gig
video: nvidia quadro fx go 700 (128 meg)

I am considering the new m70 laptop with the following hardware:
Processor: Pentium m 2.13
ram: 1 gig (for now)
video: nvidia quadro fx go 1400(256 meg)

I do some very complex modeling and assemblies with over 100 components. I have found the M60 to be very good in handling everything except it is slow at times.

I would like to know if anyone is considering the m70 over the m60 and what gains should I expect and how significant. I am just trying to justify the money to myself. Thank you very much for your time.
Brandon

 

[rockguy]

Hi Bracin.

I have the same M-60 system as you. I was curious as to the price difference between the M-60 you currently have and the M-70 you are thinking of.

I'm not sure if you would see much of a (noticable)gain from the video card but more processing power should equal more speed.

 

[bracin]

I bought my system in February or so of last year for about $2800 refurbished. The new M70 is about $3200. It seems to me that the price of these systems has gone down a bit. I believe my m60 new from dell would have been about $4500 last year.

 

[gerard1]

Hi bracin,
I have just purchased an M70,I still have my M60 quadro1000.
In a few comparisons,here's my thoughts.
Case quality-no comparison M70 does'nt flex or creak,it has magnesium lid and base not plastic as M60,it is also slightly shallower than the M60 by .5 inch.
Keyboard-much more rigid than M60 also has spill protection apparently
Graphics-for sw it rotates feature intensive model with more ease,I don't use huge assy but I imagine it would be much better there,quality wise its no different to fx1000 which is brilliant anyway.I also play the latest games,here the M70 is more than twice as good as M60 if your interested.
Speed-opening assy's,parts,probably 5 percent improvement,cosmos express is still slow on anything but simple small parts.I was mistakenly lead to believe that raid hard drive setup was going to be installable on the new sonoma laptops but not so[if anybody knows how I can softraid my second hard drive post a reply]this is where I believe the biggest improvement will be had on laptops.
Battery life-one hour less.
If you want some graphics benchmarks do a search in the catia community catbench as there's a comparison between the quadro go 1000 and 1400.
The main reason I upgraded was for the better case material and the aforementioned hard drive setup,and gaming,as far as solidworks goes I was perfectly happy with my M60 and I don't really think it is that much of an improvement[as I said I don't use huge assy's 50mb is my biggest]
If you or anybody else has any questions I would be happy to try and help.
Almost forgot,the M70 doesn't have a parallel port or D-bay connector.
hope this helps.

 

[bracin]

Thank you for the info. I actually just picked up my M70 this morning. I installed Solidworks 2004 and can not get the realview graphics to work. I am sure that I just need to set something but I can't remember what I did before. Please help
Thank you

 

[EnglishMuffin]

gerard1 : If it doesn't have a parallel port (I assume you mean the old style), what can you do about dongles ? Is there some sort of USB adapter you can get ?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

USB dongles are rapidly becoming the norm now.


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