Vectorworks laptop

[JarrodH]

I want to get a better laptop for use with Vectorworks. Has anyone tried this one:

MSI WT72 6QL-283US 17.3" WORKSTATION NOTEBOOK LAPTOP Quadro M4000M i7-6700HQ 16GB 128GB SSD + 1TB THUNDERBOLT

Or can make any recommendations?

[Jonathan Pickup]

that is not cheap but it puts it in the same area as the alienware 17". have you had a look at that one?

[PVA - Admin]

That laptop is more than powerful enough to run Vectorworks very well. However as mentioned above, it is quite costly. Those specs can be had for quite a bit less money in the Alienware line as well as the Lenovo Thinkpad P series.

You have selected a solid set of specs, but I personally recommend shopping the price around a little more, you could probably save upwards of 400$ with a little digging.

[nrkuhl]

I have an MSI laptop - their customer service is terrible. It was significantly cheaper than most of the competitors though. It's one of their gaming laptops, not a workstation laptop.

I've had previously bad experiences with workstation laptops, finding them often poorly designed with unstable hardware/drivers (had a lot of nvidia quadro related crashes when I still had one).

[Art V]

For off-the-shelf Windows based workstation laptops there are basically three brands to consider, Lenovo, HP and Dell (in random order) as they have been making these for years and have the experience and (hopefully) customer service to go with that.

That being said, you do pay a premium for that, esp. with the Quadro videocards.

An alternative would be to find a good build-to-order (BTO) laptop supplier and have it build to your specs and the performance will be close enough without having to pay that premium.

Even though Quadro videocards are aimed it high performance 3D, they have little advantage over powerful GeForce cards if there are no drivers for your software. And as far as I know there are no Quadro drivers for Vectorworks.

So I would go for a good BTO (gaming) laptop and use the savings for other things you need.

[zoomer]

I think if I would like to work on Windows,

I would buy a Macbook Pro anyway and install Windows by Bootcamp.

(Pity there is no successor for my 17" MBP)

BTW,

MBP gets 7 years old now and is still in use

My first Mac Pro was replaced after over 8 years of heavy work.

[JarrodH]

I actually have Alienware M17x now, and there have been a ton of problems with it. I'm not terribly impressed by it. Not to mention, it weighs 20lbs.

[JarrodH]

Good point with the graphics card.

Now looking at this:

CUK MSI GT72 Dominator Pro G 17.3-inch Intel Skylake i7-6820HK 32GB 128GB SSD + 1TB 7200rpm HDD NVIDIA GTX 980M 8GB Full HD Blu-Ray Windows 10 Gaming Laptop Computer

I've done Dell and HP before. I like the layout of the MSI, and this would be less than half the weight of my alienware.

[PVA - Admin]

Brand is always the more nebulous factor. For instance, almost always choose Asus, but thats mostly because while they average out to be more costly, they tend to have great replacement service and they also include all the various wires and adapters needed in things like their motherboard and power supply kits. It's very personal preference and experience at that point in the decision making.

The price on your second choice there JarrodH seems much more reasonable while still having extremely solid specs.

[grant_PD]

I use a custom XI laptop. I've found it to be a very reliable and powerful machine. Everything is customized except for the case, which I believe is an Alienware case.

It's a true desktop replacement.