Need a laptop for my needs

[Johnmeyers]

I've looked everywhere, but I can't seem to find a laptop to suit my needs, so I'm posting here since you guys always seem to have the answers.

Anyway, my 2010 MacBook Pro recently hit the bucket. It was 3000$ Desktop replacement, I got it as a gift. Since then, I actually built a PC to handle heavy work. So I no longer need a desktop replacement. But I travel a lot, do CAD work, and like to do a bit of gaming.

So basically what I'm looking for now is a Laptop for that, but NOT a gaming laptop like MSI or Alienware. Such laptops are heavy, make too much noise, and the graphics card is usually overkill for me. No touchscreen, I find them useless. A dedicated graphics card, while being quite light.. I can go up to 1300 but for that it must at least feel a bit premium.

Lenovo and HP are off the table. Bad experiences...

 

[AkbarRamzan]

I actually recommend you get a light weight laptop with a good nvidia gpu, why? Because the CUDA cores on the gpu act like a cpu and will be good for ur work. (Especially with CAD)

 

[JackNaylorPE]

We use laptops for our CAD design work; they are needed to take into the field and do As-Builts. Unfortunately .... as the performance increases so does the weight and down goes battery life. These facts are unavoidable. Fortunately AutoCAD 2D and 3D runs very well on GeForce cards so a good CAD card is a good gaming card.

So if you want strong CAD / Gaming performance weight goes up because of the required heat sinks. We also need the screen real estate so we are not wasting time zooming in and out so a 17" screen is a must. That pretty much puts you in the 6 - 8 pound category. I have no laptops w/ sound issues whether used iN CAD or gaming.

We buy all our lappies from a Clevo distributor called LPC Digital and each is custom built to our specifications. We like working with one person as our company contact thru the life of the product as he consults on component selection, handles the ordering and he's our tech support contact.

You can read about Clevo here:

http/forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=91510

CLEVO is a large Taiwanese computer company specializing in laptops. While the Clevo brand name is perhaps not widely known, their products are re-branded and sold by known boutique brand OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)… notably Sager, VoodooPC, Falcon Northwest, Eurocom, etc. They are also considered (by whoever knows about notebooks) to design and manufacturer the best of the best notebooks in terms of superior build quality and innovative designs.

At this point, we normally use a Clevo P170SM variant which comes in at about 8.5 pounds. The 125" version (P150SM) comes in a bit lighter at about 6.8.

http/www.lpc-digital.com/notebooks.html

Don't forget to grab the discount....was $150 on my last build

http/www.lpc-digital.com/notebook-review-members-military-and-student-discounts.html

The Optimus technology is very useful as when not in CAD or gaming, it greatly extends the battery life.

 

[Prostar Computer]

Clevo generally is ideal for the CAD-phile that's on the go. As Jack mentioned, they offer strong GPU options ideal for CAD work, but getting something capable of running CAD software comes at the expense of weight and battery life.