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Need Laptop Recommendation for Vectorworks


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Hello,

 

I use VW 2017 and need to purchase a new PC laptop. In January I purchased a new MSI WS60, which I thought would work great for Vectorworks. It was AWFUL. I hook it up to an external 1920x1080 USB 3.0 monitor (Asus MB168B+) and I had to lower the resolution of the laptop monitor to adjust, which I have no problem with. The problem is the text scaling was always off (regardless of the DPI & cleartext settings) and the windows in VectorWorks NEVER maintained their correct location if I closed and opened the app, or restarted or anything. I also had tons of the "ghosting" lines around the windows when I moved them. On my desktop, I have no problems. Using a different monitor isn't really an option because all of my travel kits (I'm always on the road) already have this monitor.

 

So I am asking for recommendations on a model or brand of laptop that will work better. I bought the MSI because it was marketed as a CAD laptop, but it was terrible. Budget isn't really an issue for me, I use this laptop every day on the road for my job. I don't really do any serious rendering, just wireframe documents exported to PDF.  I would like the laptop to be same size as the MSI WS60 so it fits in all my bags....the size of that was 15.3 x 10.5 x 0.8 inches.

 

Any advice is appreciated. Thank You.

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On 12/19/2016 at 3:57 PM, jstroming said:

Hello,

 

I use VW 2017 and need to purchase a new PC laptop. In January I purchased a new MSI WS60, which I thought would work great for Vectorworks. It was AWFUL. I hook it up to an external 1920x1080 USB 3.0 monitor (Asus MB168B+) and I had to lower the resolution of the laptop monitor to adjust, which I have no problem with. The problem is the text scaling was always off (regardless of the DPI & cleartext settings) and the windows in VectorWorks NEVER maintained their correct location if I closed and opened the app, or restarted or anything. I also had tons of the "ghosting" lines around the windows when I moved them. On my desktop, I have no problems. Using a different monitor isn't really an option because all of my travel kits (I'm always on the road) already have this monitor.

 

So I am asking for recommendations on a model or brand of laptop that will work better. I bought the MSI because it was marketed as a CAD laptop, but it was terrible. Budget isn't really an issue for me, I use this laptop every day on the road for my job. I don't really do any serious rendering, just wireframe documents exported to PDF.  I would like the laptop to be same size as the MSI WS60 so it fits in all my bags....the size of that was 15.3 x 10.5 x 0.8 inches.

 

Any advice is appreciated. Thank You.

 

The MSI Gaming machines I think are better than the workstations.  Something technical about GeForce vs Quadro.  I have had a GS60 for 3 years now and I have loved it - but the battery is shot - and so I have been researching for about 3 months - planning my next purchase. If budget is of no concern, then there are a bunch of good options.

 

The new Razer Blade with the Pascal 1060 is the one I would probably get.

Asus Zenbook Pro seems to offer good value in a pretty package.

Surface Book with Performance Base is smaller and more portable but should be fine for the work you are doing.

Dell XPS 15 gets great reviews.

SC17 is also interesting, but a bigger form factor.

 

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You do say PC & I know that the Mac is somewhat underpowered vis a vis what's available on the Windows side. Having said that I'm on my third MacBook Pro with an additional screen. I do some Renderworks stuff, our files are generally in the 100 - 200mg range and I'm pretty satisfied with the performance thus far. My only issue is I wish the rebooting of the MacBook had happened last year. I generally wait 3-4 years before upgrading & I'm less than a year in.... So yeah.:S

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I am running on an Alienware 15 R2 and am loving it, 2d and 3d work pretty flawlessly, and I do renders at high res and it handles it just fine.  The graphics cards you would get on the R3's now are a good step ahead as well, I bought my R2 last year.  My only complaint is that I should have gotten a larger SSD, I've had to move the VW library file to the magnetic hard drive and link a shortcut through to make sure my SSD does not fill up.

 

Aside though, I think your issue with the MSI was a windows issue and not a laptop issue.  I'm assuming you were running Windows 10?  I'm not sure if you've seen the option, but Windows 10 allows you to scale apps differently on different screens.  I only mention this because I run in to the same issue sometimes.  The native setting for my laptop screen is 125% scaling, but off-board monitors it defaults to 100%.  If I have the main VW window dragged to the off-board monitor the scaling difference causes issues for the palettes on the laptop display, they sometimes try to adjust to the 100% scaling that the off-board monitor is set to and do weird things like change size, and the ghosting you mentioned.  It got to the point where I just gave up and set the off-board monitor scaling to 125% to match the built in display.

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