Sorry for this.. Need Help With Laptop Purchase

[CMvan46]

Hi guys my girlfriend is buying a laptop for school next year and she will be using it almost exclusively for the AutoCAD software and she said the two musts are a 17" screen and a dedicated number pad on the right side of the keyboard. Dell is having a sale on their laptops and I have no idea if this is a good laptop for the cost:

XPS 17- XPS 17
Operating System- Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64-Bit, English
Processor- 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM processor (2.20GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.10GHz)
Memory- 8GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 Memory
Keyboard- Backlit Keyboard - English
Screen- 17.3" HD+ (900p) LED Display with 2.0MP HD Webcam
Video Card- NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 555M 3GB graphics with Optimus
Hard Drive- 750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Color- Elemental Silver Aluminum
Integrated Network Adapter- Integrated 10/100/1000 Network Card
Adobe Reader Adobe® Acrobat® Reader
CD ROM/DVD ROM Tray Load Blu-ray Disc BD-Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD)
Sound- JBL 2.1 Speakers with Waves Maxx Audio 3
Wireless Plus Bluetooth Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1030 and Bluetooth 3.0

Total including taxes/shipping is $1280 CAD ~ 825 pounds.

She is looking at that total as about the max she wants to spend and if anybody knows of any other laptops in that range that they could recommend that would be greatly appreciated as well. Thanks!

 

[cjmpe]

I've had good experience with Dells in general. Looking around, that is a good price for a system with those specs.

My only comment would be about the desire to have the number pad beside the keyboard. On any laptop with that feature that I have seen the manufacturer has fiddled with the key sizes a bit in the area of the enter and shift key and the typing experience has been a bit odd. Can't comment if Dell has done this - too bad they don't have a store where you can lay hands on one. I'm not saying this is necessarily a problem, just be aware of it. You can always buy an external USB number pad too - they are really inexpensive.

 

[TB]

Having been the owner of a 17" Dell and a full-time AutoCAD user, that laptop will do the job nicely. The screen is large enough that when you have your toolbars open you still have decent drawing space. For the processor, if my C2D T7200 with 2Gb of RAM could handle it (albeit I was running AutoCAD 2006), the i7 with 8Gb will do fine.

Also, I agree with cjmpe - with options like this available, I wouldn't be too hung up with needing a number pad on the laptop itself. Having used AutoCAD for close to 10 years now, I've never felt the need to use the number pad consistently enough to purchase one.

 

[CMvan46]

Ok thanks a lot guys, I do think that's the laptop she's going to go with. I'll let her know about the number pad but this laptop does have it to begin with and I haven't found a laptop with specs close to that for anywhere near that price in my searching.

 

[robert1]

this isnt really about the specs but the numpad thing, i got an acer laptop, full size numpad and all the keys are just like normal, just the keyboard goes right out to the edge, no real border and there is even nice gaps between all the keys, so if dell are clever im sure they can pull the same trick

 

[thechosenwonton]

I'd recommend getting the higher rez screen; no point in having a 17" laptop when the it has a 900p screen, and 1080p is an extra $100 - you don't gain any real estate for the size increase. Otherwise, yes, the XPS line is very nice, good performance and build quality.

 

[cjmpe]

The good news is that I saw an XPS at a computer mall in Shanghai today and remembered this thread. The keyboard is that I would call "normal" - no weird key resizings or relocations. The price on the system here was way higher than you quoted in your original message.

 

[CMvan46]

Thanks a lot guys and thanks for taking a look. She bought it tonight.

Basically all the specs I mentioned but we added the 1080p screen as was recommended.

I found a coupon code for $50 off so total came to $1170 pre tax, ~$1300 including taxes... God I hate 12% tax.

Thanks for the help.

 

[robert1]

12% wow you guys are lucky..wait till you get are 20% lol

 

[Bram Turismo]

I'd say a high resolution is a bigger priority than a 17" screen when working with Autocad.

My 15" ASUS won't go higher than 1366 wide, and thus working with large Autocad drawings is a pain in the butt. Yet my buddy, who has a HP workhorse laptop, has the same sized screen, but he has a massive 1980 wide resolution I believe. Then again, he paid nearly double for his laptop as I did for mine.

If there's one thing I hate with my ASUS is the low resolution. But I doubt my HD5730 card could handle all this stuff on a much higher resolution.

 

[nick09]

The Asus laptop I bought a little more than two years ago has a 17" screen and the 1600x900 resolution. The size of the screen with the resolution works well. I don't do 3D work but I've looked at some 3D models in Google Sketchup and I had room.

 

[TB]

I don't see the screen resolution as being too big an issue. You're already doing so much scrolling and panning using AutoCAD that the tiny bit more due to a lower resolution won't matter, especially as you don't need to enter any commands to pan or zoom. Personally, I'd be more concerned with a bunch of unnecessary toolbars being open.

 

[CMvan46]

Well on top of that reason one of the cons a number of people had in reviews were that that the 900p panel was a cheap and lower quality one but the optional 1080p one got very positive reviews so that was the other part of the decision.

Plus with the $50 coupon the total only came to $50 more than I'd originally told her and so then that upgrade didn't seem so bad.

TB what are you doing for work that your using AutoCAD?

 

[TB]

TB what are you doing for work that your using AutoCAD?

I was a designer for an Electrical Engineer for ~8 years and am now the CAD monkey/driving god/in-house IT for North Dakota State University.