Help choosing a laptop

damiengajda

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Mar 15, 2017
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Hi,

I'm currently looking to buy a laptop for a member of staff to use on building sites to do 3D scanning with an Artec EVA https://www.artec3d.com/portable-3d-scanners/artec-eva

1. What is your budget? Around £700, but i'm willing to pay more if you think a more expensive one would be more suitable

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 15" will be fine

3. What screen resolution do you want? 1080 will be fine

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Portable

5. How much battery life do you need? As much as possible, preferably with a battery that can be changed quickly, not built in

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)? No

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Just 3D scanning with an Artec EVA scanner and processing data as fast as possible with Artec Studio software

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 1tb will be fine, all data is transferred to the server after use

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. I don't mind

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? I would hope that it would last for 5 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? Not needed

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons. For this laptop i really don't mind, i'm open to anything that suits the task best

13. What country do you live in? UK (England)

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed. I'm told that they use Artec Studio to process the data, and this is the most CPU intensive task it does, so i need a laptop with enough processing power for that (I think it uses a lot of RAM too). It would help if it was quite a durable laptop too, as the member of staff who uses it can be quite clumsy, however its not essential as we do have a harness for it

Thanks!
 

guanyu210379

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Actually, if you need the laptop for professional usage, I would bump up the budget to get really a good laptop for work.
Everything under €1000 (around 800-900 pounds?) is not really that good for that kind of need, mostly not that durable.
Would it be possible to aim at Lenovo T480?
I have always T4xx series for work. It is very durable, battery can be exchange fast, and the support is excellent.
I own T400, T430 and now planing to get T480 or T580.
Even my T400 from 2007-2008 is still healthy.
You can also pick the T580, if you want.

If you need something really robust, you can only go for ToughBook, but this one cost a fortune.
 

damiengajda

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Mar 15, 2017
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510
Thanks for the reply, however I don't think the Lenovo T580 would be any good for it seeing as it only has a quad core 1.6ghz CPU, that seems quite slow for a laptop that needs to process huge 3d cad files, or am I missing something here?
 

guanyu210379

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The T580 comes in seevral variants.
the lowest one is equiped with I5 8250u and the highest variant comes with I7 8650u.

There is another good series, if you need really a powerhouse.
HP ZBook line. This one is not as robust as the T4xxx/5xxx but it can go a lot more powerful than the Thinkpads.
Just bare in mind that those ZBook are not light, they are quite heavy.
Thinkpad is the more ballanced between mobility and performance.
I am also using this ZBook in the office.
e.g.
http://store.hp.com/GermanyStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=2ZC56EA&opt=ABD&sel=NTB
If you like the Ryzen 7 2700U, HP has also one on their probook series.
 

damiengajda

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Mar 15, 2017
4
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510


Thanks for the reply, any reason why you suggested the ROG range?

From what i understand, those laptops are built for gaming, not processing large 3d models, they have low RAM and gaming oriented graphics cards (GTX range). Is there a reason i'm not aware of that makes these laptops good for 3D scanning and processing large 3d models?
 

damiengajda

Prominent
Mar 15, 2017
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510


Ah i see, i'll have a bit more of a look into the lenovo ones, and i'll also have a look into the ZBooks, thanks for the suggestions :)
 

guanyu210379

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There is also an option.
The business lines are more robust and have better support but if you want to push the budget lower a it and if you say, you do not need those support and do not really need that robustness, you can also pick the usual customer products.
Among those power horses, I would pick any of those high-end gaming laptops like ASUS ROG series.
The powerful gaming GPU can help for 3D works too.
RAM is manageable, you can susually add more RAMs.
 
Mar 16, 2018
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No sir, 3D Modeling also depending on you CPU and Thread and Cuda Cores on Nvidia or Stream Procecssor on AMD. So if you have more budget, you can pick the i7 8750H or Ryzen 7 2700 on ROG and ROG has more durability and best fan controller, so you dont need to worry about the heat when you finish 3D Modelling :)