High-end workstation laptop

[Yuriman]

A friend asked me to help pick out a laptop for her husband. He works with a lot of Adobe software, most is GPU accelerated, and needs something with a lot of grunt and tons of storage. The sky is the limit on price, but I'd be happy to keep it under $3000 if possible.

Hoping to find:
Intel Quad
NV/AMD high end discrete GPU
Large SSD + large storage drive
Nice screen - preferably 1080P+ and IPS

Size wasn't specified, and battery life isn't a concern.

 

[somethingsketchy]

Your best bet is going to be one of three options: Dell, HP or Lenovo. At least two of three my employer utilizes heavily are Lenovo W530's and Dell Mobile Precision M3800's. Both are rock solid and paired with some SSDs + a FirePro/Quadro card, he'll do very well.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m3800-workstation/fs
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m6800-workstation/fs

Note the M6800 is a big (in all dimensions) mobile workstation, so if he prefers something portable, the m6800 is not for him.

 

[Yuriman]

I'm liking the lineup Lenovo has, but I wonder if a non-pro graphics card wouldn't be faster and cheaper? Are Quadros going to be in all professional-oriented notebooks?

EDIT: The upgrade options seem much more reasonable on the Dell, plus it seems to have more room for expansion. Lenovo wants $700 for 32GB of DDR3. Think I'll start with that as a base and pick some stuff on Newegg.

 

[ringtail]

``

 

[ringtail]

http://www.powernotebooks.com/configure.php?special=1723

Sager NP8268 Gaming Laptops

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Specifications


Display 15.6" Full HD LED-Backlit Display with Matte Finished Surface (1920 x 1080)Zero Dead Pixel Insurance Guaranteed no dead or partially-lit pixels for first 30 days of purchasing - Special Promotion Offer!Video & Graphics Card Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M GPU with 8GB GDDR5 Video Memory [$300.00]CPU Processor 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4910MQ Processor ( 8MB L3 Cache, 2.90GHz) [$370.00]Thermal Compound IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU - Special Promotion Offer!Operating System Genuine MS Windows® 7 Professional 32/64-Bit Edition ( 64-Bit Preloaded ) [$65.00]Memory 32GB Kingston HyperX CL9 Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 4 X 8GB [$380.00]mSATA SSD RAID Storage Options

Non-RAID StoragemSATA SSD Drive Slot 1 1TB Samsung 840 EVO Series mSATA3 SSD - as an OS Drive (Primary Drive C) [$420.00]Hard Disk Drive 1 1TB Samsung 850 Pro Series SATA3 Solid State Disk Drive [$665.00]Optical Drive Bay — Optical Drive or Hard Disk Drive in Optical Drive Bay with Caddy case 8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & SoftwareWireless Network Card Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 AC Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Module - Special Promotion Offer!Primary Battery Smart Li-ION Battery PackIntegrated Security Device Fingerprint ReaderMicrosoft Office Microsoft Office Home & Business 2013 ( Includes everything in Home & Student, plus Outlook. ) [$215.00]Warranty Sager 3 Year Limited Parts and Labor Warranty [$149.00]

$4,063.00
(you said "high end")

 

[skriefal]

An IPS screen will be difficult to find on a business-line workstation laptop from Dell, HP, Lenovo, or any of the mainline "PC" brands. You'll either need a Macbook Retina Pro or one of the Sager or similar models from PowerNotebooks, XoticPC, etc. Unfortunately the Sager & similar models often have very poor battery life, even relative to similar models from Dell, HP, Lenovo.

I used to like the Lenovo Thinkpad line, but the inability to change the wireless card in my (former) Thinkpad W530 -- due to BIOS whitelisting -- cured me of my Thinkpad lust. Endless buggy drivers from Intel, and no way to install a more reliable 802.11n or 802.11ac card. HP has the same whitelisting issues. So it's Dell for me from now on.

 

[Yuriman]

Actually, it looks like Lenovo and Dell both provide IPS panels in all of their high-end workstation laptops.

The Sager looks pretty nice, I may explore their reliability track record.

 

[TheGoat Eater]

MSI has a line of good workstations with enough variants to find one suited to your needs and budget. XoticPC or another customizer would have some you can customize as well

http://us.msi.com/product/workstation/

 

[skriefal]

Actually, it looks like Lenovo and Dell both provide IPS panels in all of their high-end workstation laptops.

Link? They offer LED-backlit panels. That's not the same as IPS.

(Oh, I see that Lenovo does have a W540 model with 2880x1620 IPS panel. Unfortunately that's the exception rather than the rule.)

 

[snoylekim]

The Hp Z-Book series offer at least 2 IPS displays :
- The Dreamcolor panel is a 10 Bit IPS Panel - Very Pricey , and IMHO one of those 'if you have to ask, you don't need it' options . if you're interested , it's offered on the 15 and for a while, the 17 .. there's a question whether or not the G2 release will offer this option .
- The UWVA Display on the 17" is (was) an LG/Philips IPS - This one I have working knowledge and experience with - very nice and calibrates cleanly . Been using this w/ Adobe CC for photographic and video processing and no issues .