Thinkpad or Clevo?

[Worzyl]

Hi there, I wasn't to sure which category to post this question in, so please feel free to move it if necessary.

I'm having to upgrade my T60p into something faster in order to run 3d animation programs.

I have been looking at these 3 machines:

Thinkpad W550
MSI WS60
Dell 3M800

All three of these are light and I only need it to create the animations, so I will not be modelling, texturing or rendering on them.

I like the look of the thinkpad but I'm unsure if it's fast enough to run the latest version of max/maya smoothly. I like that it runs cool and also has a nice battery life which is good as I do quite a bit of travelling.

I've borrowed a friends machine - MSI GE620 DX and this runs max with no problems, so the latest Dell and MSI would be fine running the software.

Annoyingly - I cant find any hardware minimum requirements to run the software programs.

The other option are custom building a Clevo laptop, but I'm not sure how much I would save on cost and how heavy it would be to carry as I would like it to be under 5lbs if possible.

My budget would be £1000 - £1500 (maybe a little more depending).

Any advice?

[Worzyl]

Been using my friends MSI GE620 DX and it runs super hot with the fans always on. I am guessing that the Dell and MSI maybe similar due to them both being quad core too.

I will have to do some more Clevo and W550 research.

[600X]

Just check which GPU your friends MSI has, then you can assess which specs you need.

[ajkula66]

Do bear in mind the letter "s" behind W550...it does not sport a full voltage CPU, since Broadwells of that nature haven't been released yet.

My pick out of those three would be Dell. Or wait for the "full" W series machine.

My $0.02 only...

[Worzyl]

Thank you for the replies. I managed to find a recommended list of laptops on the autodesk site.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/sy ... =all&opt=1

If you scroll down, you can see that the W540 and W541 is listed but not the W550.
It is a shame as I actually liked the reviews of how cool they run and the battery life.

[Worzyl]

After much research and talk, it looks like I may have to opt for some sort of gaming laptop. I've narrowed it down to an Asus G501 with a 1080p screen. It's supposed to run cool and quiet so that I dont make people frown in the library.

[600X]

If you want a gaming laptop, but still want to look somewhat professional, then take a look at MSI's P-series. They even have superior faactory-calibrated FHD IPS screens with different color modes, including sRGB.

[Khipata]

I would recommend W520 with Quadro 2000M Chip. Not very expensive and better keyboard. You can have it under USD 500 barebones. Remaining money you can use for gaming laptop, Clevo Sager or whatever the best
Just my 2 cents

[TonyJZX]

While I seen a few Clevos that have a decent design and spec, the big problem is that they have close to zero aftermarket support... they constantly change their batteries and spares and you simply cannot buy any spares unless you want to go back to the manufacturer and even then, its expensive or been made "EOL".

Clevos are disposable.

Saying that you have a similar experience with many famous brand 2nd tier companies.

[600X]

Finding spare parts for my Clevo P150em appears to be quite easy. Prices are decent too. Currently, ebay is offering everything from keyboards to palmrests and fans. Obviously, MXM GPU's have always been expensive and somewhat hard to find, but that's not a problem that is specific to Clevo.

[TonyJZX]

In my country the largest Clevo dealer went broke so owners were scrambling for spares and support.

I would expect the popular gaming rigs would have gotten support but they seriously sold like over a dozen models.

[ajkula66]

In my country the largest Clevo dealer went broke so owners were scrambling for spares and support.

Then it's a local problem, and not a general one...

[TonyJZX]

In my country the largest Clevo dealer went broke so owners were scrambling for spares and support.

Then it's a local problem, and not a general one...

With all due respect, thats why I said "in my country"

but lets go further

I just typed in the most popular model sold here and there's no spares on ebay besides the keyboard.

Ok lets go to ebay.com - all I get is kbd, psu and the std. battery besides commodities like ram hdd

Maybe we are spoilt by the sheer wealth of spares options with lenovos but I think a situation like that makes Clevos unsuitable except for home use non serious laptops. Which is their target market. And the market targeted many 2nd tier companies.

[600X]

Spare parts of current models do not appear on ebay. Considering that these models are probably still under warranty, I do not view this as an issue. They only start cropping up later on in the life cycle of a product, which is fine by my standards. The need for spare parts usually arises once the machine gets older. Like I mentioned, my P150em seems to be covered just fine, but it is true that the finding parts for the current line up is difficult.