[TerryS]

We purchased two Dell Latitude 5000 series laptops just before build season and they worked out great for running SolidWorks. They have Intel Core i5 processors, 8Gb of RAM, 500Gb Hybrid HDD, the Intel HD Graphics 4400 and Windows 7. They were a little under $800 each. We modeled our entire robot including almost all of the electronics, nuts, screws and even a few rivets (the devil's in the details!) Didn't include the wiring. No problem viewing and manipulating the full model even when placed on the model of the full field with game pieces. Takes about a minute to load the full model. We didn't try any high res renders and we didn't do any FEA.