Time to replace my aging desktop which is powered by a Pentium hamster-cage. I want a laptop with a bit of oomph to be able to run CAD software capably. I’m not going to be doing enormous complicated stuff, and I don’t want to spend much money.
So min requirements are : 2Gb RAM, 2+ GHz, 100Gb hard drive and a decent graphics card.
Been looking at these Dell M90s on ebay. anything else out there?
Cheers.

If you’re running CAD, you absolutely want something with a discrete graphics card and plenty of memory. I’d be batting for 3Gb as a minimum and a good hi-res screen. Don’t get hung up on CPU speed, any modern non-Celeron-esque CPU will serve you well.

Stick with named brands; HP/Compaq, IBM/Lenovo, Toshiba etc etc. Avoid supermarket brands and Fujitsu.

Its worth popping into a carphone warehouse if you have one near by, they do very good deals on laptops as a loss leader to get people into the shop hoping they might buy a phone while theyre in there. I got an Asus with 3 gb of ram and a 320gb hard drive for under £350, they do Dell too.

Need lots of pixels, which will push you to a non-mainstream model or simply a big one.

try currys website i purchased a laptop for 315 remanufactured ,(customer return) against the new price of 700 at the time .comes with one year guarantee and they had lots of different makes that were for sale this way but they are only available online.

depends what CAD you’re wanting to do really. If it’s just 2D AutoCad stuf, then you don’t need a great deal. If you’re going 3D (say, solidworks) and needing to do reasonable size assemblies (prob 10+ parts) then you should really be looking at a MIN of 4Gb RAM, 64 bit OS, and a specific graphics card, ideally running to the OpenGL standard natively in hardware, though that epends to an extent again on the specific sware pacakge youll be using as Autodesk products I think can natively do DirectX. Either way, you need the seperate card really, ideally a minimum of 256Mb RAM, ideally 0.5Gb. Oh, and a high screen resolution of at LEAST 1600×1050

Search:-

x-stock

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/X-stock-shop

e computers

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/eComputers-LTD

both the above very good rep. & you can email them with specific requirements and they’ll see what they can get.

CP – it’ll be 3D stuff aswell as Acad. Either Pro/E, Inventor or Solidworks (or all 3) and maybe a bit of Ansys thrown in for good measure.
Plan on using a separate monitor for most of the time, but want a laptop for portability and storage.
I know about basic requirements needed for the software, so cheers for the ebay links, I’ll have a look.

We used those M90’s at work to run Solidworks on. Seemed ok at the time (this would be Solidworks 2008), so maybe a bit slower now) and those prices look pretty good.

I use a Dell Precision M6400 for CATIA V5 at work, they can be picked up at pretty reasonable prices on ebay.

we all work with well under the minimum that cp specifies running works quite happily..

Scotia- do you just do basic part modelling and drawings?? In my experience of several machine and solidworks and inventor, you need aim of the above spec. Yes, it works on less, but I wouldn’t want to work with it as I find the waiting for things to happen interrupts the flow of modelling way too much.

A m90 similar to linked with a memory upgrade and 64 bit version of windows would be great.

cp – sorry no – should i stop working then?!

Current assembly has 105 parts and works a treat. File size is only 14.7Mb tho..

All i was trying to say is that it can work v well with a lower spec machine – currently on a Dell M6300

FEA and works running at the same time, all working just fine.

morgan computers are good for secondary stock/factory reworks/refurbs:

http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/shop/detail.asp?ProductID=6216&CategoryID=404&SubCategoryID=413

Working on a Dell M90 here with a memory upgrade and it does the job pretty well for AutoCAD and SolidWorks, been using it for nearly 4 years now, should be able to pick up a refurbished/2nd hand one pretty cheap I would expect.

Cheers, Rich