Re: Looking for a laptop for CAD
 

I have run Inventor 2014 on a MacBook Pro with an i5 at 2.5Ghz and Intel HD4000 graphics with 8gbs of RAM quite well under bootcamp. While a MacBook is well out of your price range, you could expect laptops with similar specs to run it about the same.

Re: Looking for a laptop for CAD
 

Well, I've had a G55VW for a year now and it works quite well for CAD and certainly helps with compiling LabView code as well.

The only difference between the G45VW and the G55VW (as far as specs go) is the G55VW has a slower-clocked quad core processor in it, and hyper-threading.
Oh, and that G45VW has a larger HDD in it than my laptop.

Also, the cooling on this thing seems ridiculous until you are running Inventor in you lap and realize you aren't being burnt by it like most laptops.
The only complaint I have with it is that it IS a bit heavy. (which wasn't a problem until our bus broke down in OKC last year)

Re: Looking for a laptop for CAD
 

A quick observation - Autodesk 2014 products are not optimized for the high-dpi 2560x1440 and similar displays that are becoming standard on higher end ultrabooks.

To be readable, Windows runs at about 125-150% DPI scaling by default on displays with this density. Most applications can handle this scaling fine. Autodesk products are a disaster, however - text overflows regions, icons are way off, etc. Basically makes it unusable. So you have to scale down to 100% which makes everything tiny.

With this in mind, if you do end up with an ultrabook or something in the 13" neighborhood, I'd go for 1920x1080 which is the ideal resolution to run at 100% scaling at that screen size.

Give it a few years once all laptops are shipping with hidpi displays when Autodesk will get around to making their apps scale nicely.

Re: Looking for a laptop for CAD
 

I am really partial to the Dell Precision Line of laptops. They really hold up to the the rough use I put them through and can handle any CAD you can throw at them as they are designed to be mobile workstations. In my opinion if you can spend a bit more on something quality designed for CAD work it will be worth it. Even if you can get a lesser machine to work, you won't get nearly the performance with lots of parts open and assemblies with a bunch of parts.

Also spending a bit more now will mean it will most likely last longer and be compatible with future version of CAD software.

Re: Looking for a laptop for CAD
 

I also use a Lenovo yoga. It runs pretty much everything I need it too. Great machine. If you have the cash I highly recommend it.

Re: Looking for a laptop for CAD
 

I have been using an ASUS the past couple of weeks and I love it. It is pretty beefy in power so it runs SolidWorks very smoothly with no problems yet. May not be what you are looking for, as it is pricey, but this is just to give you an idea of what I run and what works for me.

Specs:
i7-4700HQ @ 2.4GHz
16.0GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760m with 2GB memory
64Bit Windows 8

Re: Looking for a laptop for CAD
 

I really like de-comissioned ibm thinkpads workstation laptops. I have a T61p that has a(albeit outdated) dedicated workstation graphics card. It's a 5-6 year old laptop now. Runs solidworks and inventor like a champ, only really has problems with large assemblies, but that's pretty normal.

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
256MB Nvidia Quadro FX 570M
4gb memory
64gb sata 2 ssd for improved launch times and battery life

I got it 2 years ago for $240, there are a lot of refurbished ibm's like this floating around. the build quality on this one in particular is really good!

Re: Looking for a laptop for CAD
 

I have a Toshiba Satellite C855D (AMD A6-4400M @2.7 GHz) with 4 GB RAM. It's comparatively slow at opening files, though it still gets parts open in less than 5 seconds and assemblies in less than 30 (depending on the size). Once the files are open, it has almost no issues past graphics (slow down a lot when I zoom in on objects with a lot of faces).

Wow... I like parentheses.