Suggestions for Work Laptop

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1

Hey Guys

Looking for suggestions for a laptop to roll out to the testers in our office.

The requirements are:

  • CPU: Haswell (Prefer i7 Will settle for i5)
  • RAM: 16GB (Prefer 32GB, reasoning is that we run a LOT of VM's)
  • GPU: Half decent GPU (needs to be able to cycle throuh MD5's and WPA keys efficiently, ATI works better for this but Cuda will work fine)
  • Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher (this is actually where I'm getting stuck)
  • HDD: Prefer SSD for OS plus 500GB / 1TB secondary.

So far I've ruled out:

  • Razer Blade Pro 14" - Horrible Screen, amost made me throw up in my mouth.
  • Razer Blade - 8GB RAM, won't sell with higher, being a business expense, they won't like us modding our own machines to increase the RAM.
  • Alienware 17 & 18 - Weigh more than family hatchback plus we all know you owns (read: ruined) Alienware now.

My current "most suitable" choice is the Lenovo Ideapad Y510p Dual GPU. It can come with he specs I want, well priced, company approved vendor etc.. I played TF2 on one of these at Defcon and it was pretty awesome, nice screen, nice kyboard, good FPS and decent sound.

My concern is the 24GB SSD, not entirely sure I'm going to make much use of this. If anyone has experience with these, le me know. If the C Drive is stuck at 24GB and all the program files and junk is on D, it can get messy from my experience.

Can you guys suggest any other models to look into? (No, Macbooks are not an option, we don't currently have any hippies in our department)

2

Are you married to the Windows OS? I know System76 has some promising laptops, with a Haswell Core i7's and other features customizable. However, the laptops are designed to run Ubuntu Linux, and come with the latest version of Ubuntu pre-installed. IF you need Windows, you'd have to install that manually.

I think the Galago UltraPro will hit most marks:

https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/galu1

3

MSI GE60

4

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1013&products_id=24050

5

That is on the cheap end

6

MSI gx70.

7

Thanks guys, will take a look into these.

8

For windows it's enough. You can always upgrade it

I was going to reccomend Thinkpads but you've already spotted them.