I have saving for a full-blown desktop rebuild, but at the same time I have been thinking "Maybe I could just get the enterprise style laptop with docking station and everything and be satisfied." Can you point me in the right direction to research these laptops to see if they're capable of the gaming and other things I would be hoping to use them for?
Lenovo T series, the Carbon series. Lots of docking options. Enterprise/business laptops dont really equal gaming devices but with the newer intel igpu performing pretty good, as long as you can suffice with indie games and/or aaa titles @ lower resolutions and dropped quality settings.
Also check out Dell and HP, but I cant speak highly enough for Lenovo's gear, rock solid and a keyboard experience to die for.
I'll have to look into exactly which lenovo they gave me at work, but from what you're saying I pretty well have top of the line? The work computer gave me the idea since it was powerful enough to run Solidworks and chrome at the same time (I have seen some desktops struggle) but wasn't sure if there was more choice out there that I wasn't aware of. Like maybe Alienware type LTs that have docking capability.
Not worth it unless you travel constantly
Thought I might be able to cut the desktop out of the picture.... but I think it's going to be fun building a new desktop anyways... but really thought I might be able to minimize my tech devices.... I'll have to consider this heavily
What about something like an Alienware as a "desktop replacement" even if I don't have the luxury of an enterprise dock? Not sure I travel all that much, but when I do.....
eurocom.com but i cant seem to get on the site right now.
Like this one? I see at least one guy on here that really seems to like these guys and this thing claims "workstation performance"
Dell Precision workstation laptops are pretty popular enterprise level laptops. The last engineering company I worked for always got precision laptops for any engineers that were assigned to construction sites for field engineering support. They are plenty powerful enough to run AutoCAD, Smart Plant 3d, Navisworks, or just about any 3D design software. You can get i5 or i7 processor with mobile quadro or firepro gpu's. Don't how the mobile quadro chips would do for gaming though. I had an Precision M4700 w/ i5 and K2000M 2GB gpu but I never tried running any games on it.
Yea my company is pretty explicit about the games on the laptop thing. Less stringent on the phones, but yea, I haven't installed steam on my Lenovo to see if it's worth it.
The performance you get per dollar is just terrible in any high end laptop, why not just build an ITX rig for something portable, and what's your end budget goal?
May abandon docking station idea, but not abandoning desktop replacement LT. Will continue discussion in the other thread I made that you've already found.
- new Xeon powered laptops, drool worthy stuff thats worth considering. Wish I had the spare clams to buy one.
If those are dockable and beat MSI with that idea of theirs, this could be the way I go.... That seems cheap for that level of..... everything
Was reminded of this http://us.msi.com/product/nb/GS30-Shadow-with-Gaming-Dock-Intel-Iris-Pro-5200.html#hero-overview in another thread. I saw the TekSyndicate CES coverage of it and then completely forgot about it.
What about the Alienware Graphics Amplificator? Same principle as the MSI thing but far less bulky and akward.
Doesn't look like it has any ports of its own though. Just nitpicking at this point. I was kinda trying to avoid Alienware, but they might have everything I need except playing nice with Linux.
Hey, we are talking around 2 big ones worth of equipment you want to derive joy from. If you don't like it you don't like it and won't buy it.
If you need a justification for buying the MSI one, just let us know, we will provide one :)
For example: If you want an enterprise laptop with a dock just for the sake of being all professional with a dock on your desk and being able to click it in place after a day's work, you can do that. You could get a Thinkpad remodel your desktop PC into an HTPC and put it in the living room, with gaming as the only purpose.
I wouldn't worry too much about Linux compatibility. I have loads of customers with Lenovo T440Ses running Ubuntu VMs. What you're looking at should do you just fine with a Linux VM. Unless of course a VM is out of the question for whatever reason and you just like rebooting your machine to get a different OS.
I originally thinking of running Linux full time and VMing MS to game, but the rabbit hole of my ways has been pointed out to me. I can dual boot no problem. Was just thinking ahead to getting away from dual booting. Oh well.
Hell, it's not really justification to buy the MSI stuff [it's not even on the market yet and this is!], I can imagine that similar proprietary drivers and things will be needed on that as well. I mean the only thing this http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-13/pd?oc=dkcwe06h&model_id=alienware-13#overrides=dkcwe06h:7969~452-BBRG;3~16G2D is missing is the ability to run Linux as primary OS. I simply figured the docking station itself simplified the process of switching between desktop and laptop modes. Plugging into the PCI slot shouldn't be all that much more difficult.