Laptop for use with AutoCAD

Luckycharms_74

Hi All

A friend of mine is looking for a laptop for his work which will be mainly used for autoCAD. Any recommendations??????

I guess it should have something like.

3-4 GB Ram
1GB graphics card
500gb hard drive
17"+ screen.
Or is the above a bit overkill???

thanks for any help

leninbenjamin

what's the budget?

edit:

can't do much without a budget to work with, but in the meantime:

nslattery1974 wrote: »

Hi All

A friend of mine is looking for a laptop for his work which will be mainly used for autoCAD. Any recommendations??????

I guess it should have something like.

3-4 GB Ram
1GB graphics card
500gb hard drive
17"+ screen.
Or is the above a bit overkill???

thanks for any help

you're on the right lines, but it just depends on how heavily the laptop will be used for this stuff. If it's just some light CAD and then mainly generic college work like word processing, then yes, the above is completely overkill.

a 1GB graphics card isn't necessary either way imo, I don't think CAD relies on the GPU as much as other apps. a 256 will suffice, but a 512 is probably the happy medium. Best to budget in a decent CPU as well.

perhaps something like the Sony FW range will do?
http://www.dabs.ie/products/sony-fw41m-h-c2d-4-500-bluray-vhp-5LD7.html?refs=46400000-50220000-51220000
If you shop around you can get some pretty good prices on them.

Asus/Acer have some good offereings in the 17-18'' that can be found as a bargin in PCworld/Curries from time to time, but i'm not that familiar with the range. Dell have the overpriced Precision and XPS ranges, but the cheaper Vostro 1720 has some good offerings that might suffice.

Luckycharms_74

nslattery1974 wrote: »

Hi All

A friend of mine is looking for a laptop for his work which will be mainly used for autoCAD. Any recommendations??????

I guess it should have something like.

3-4 GB Ram
1GB graphics card
500gb hard drive
17"+ screen.
Or is the above a bit overkill???

thanks for any help

Yeah sorry forgot to put this in, budget is around €1k

leninbenjamin

Okay, well there is some good value to be had in the Dell Vostro range. The build quality isn't fantastic as it's the budget range but i've had one as may main PC for two years now and it's survived all sorts of abuse.

A Vostro 1720 can be had with a P8700 (2.53Ghz), 4GM RAM, 320GB HDD and 512 9600m for under €800. The most attractive of the lot imo.

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?b=&c=ie&cs=iebsdt1&kc=N4X17203&l=en&m_30=143330&oc=N1017207&rbc=N1017207&s=bsd

AS i mentioned above, the Sony FW's can be had for a reasonable price. You pay a bit of a premium for blu-ray, but a friend recently picked one up on offer from Argos of all places for less than 900 with a 512MB ATI GFX card, although the CPU was a t6xxx (2.2Ghz i think).

Another alternative is something like this Fujitsu Siemens which has the slightly more capable GT230m, but again a much weaker processor.

http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfullat.asp?productcode=ECE1777794#spec

and there are a few more Acer
http://www.dabs.ie/products/acer-tm7730g-c2d-3gb-250-dvdrw-vhp-5L71.html?refs=50246-51220000

and Asus
http://www.dabs.ie/products/asus-f70sl-c2d-4gb-500-dvdrw-vhp-5L39.html?refs=50626-51220000

(the prices of the Asus and Acer aren't particularly attractive here although i've seen some good deals on one of them in PCworld recently enough).

you've a fair bit of choice anyway.

Voodu Child

The Dell Studio 17 has a 17" screen. Its very shortly going to be upgraded in spec to mobile i7 processors (!) and 1GB ATI graphics card. Check the US site, its upgraded already there. Link

Those new mobile i7 CPUs are very powerful indeed, they'd be ideal for workstations or power users. I bet it won't break the €1000 budget either.