Thinkpads Forum

Hey everyone,

Basic story: my aunt is a widow with a small income and my cousin (her daughter) has a crappy computer. She is an architecture student, second year (not a good major if you are on a limited income, but go figure), and my mom asked me to buy her a new computer for her birthday (May 8th). From talking with my cousin, I get the feeling she would rather have a laptop over a desktop (it's supposed to be a surprise). I believe the most demanding program she would run is Autocad.

So my question is, which of the T series TPs is right for her? Is the T series even right for her (I priced one of the R series, and it was pretty affordable)? Would a TP with integrated graphics work? Any suggestions or comments are welcome.

P.S. I am tempted to give her my T60, but then I would have to buy a new one for my wife, so... same story.

Edit: I am not in a technical field myself (literature is my thing), hence my asking about AutoCad and all.

My ex-roommate was a architecture student, and from what I gather, they need lots of juice to run Autocad, although my roommate's program preferred Maya.

From what I've experienced, integrated graphics will not work well for Maya once the models get complex enough. My roommate's been salivating over Macs (she lugs around a 17" Dell... ouch...), but the lack of sufficient power on Macs (Macbook Pros are out of her budget) is holding her back.

I'm not sure if the 140m on the T61 will run well enough, but I do know the T61p will be very much sufficient for her needs.

She'll also be needing as much CPU juice as you can cram into the TP, since they'll be running renders of their models. This means, once they "draw" the model, they will need to let the program calculate the viewing angles, lighting, and textures applied to the model, generating a 2D image of the 3D model. It doesn't take forever, but a fast CPU will make it more bearable.

Mind you, this is all with my roommate's Maya in mind. Autocad might be different?

For major AutoCAD work, the T61p with either screen size will suffice (depending on how much weight she is willing to put up with). I was toying with the configurations just now and managed to price a 14.1" model to below $1000 after coupon codes, before tax.

Personally I use my X61 (integrated graphics) and still manage to do some 3D AutoCAD in wireframe mode. Any rendering (making the objects look realistic) is painfully slow.

To improve productivity in AutoCAD, a physically large display (i.e. 15"+) and a very high resolution one at that helps a bunch..

Given that the T61p 14.1" screen is actually a bigger image than the 15". I would get that. You sacrifice 128Mb DGGR3 memory with the 14.1" screen but the image on a 15" will be smaller.

Can her School make a recommendation in terms of T61/p and screen size based upon their experience, or maybe some of her classmates?

I do not have much experiene with AutoCad, but would imagine the most taxing is the graphics card. The price difference between a similar specced T61 and T61p (top of the line) is I believe $50 or so last I checked.

Also, look into her school, it is possible she might get student discounts. I remember getting great discounts as a student. I suggest, just like sktn77a, that the school tends to recommend minimum specs on computers for their students.

A T61 with the NVS-140 graphics will be fine. Thats what I buy for our Autocad people at work. Sure some other graphics cards are better but the NVS-140 is fine.

You might look at the R series to save a couple dollars. If she is young she can drag around a notebook that weighs an extra pound or two.

Thanks everyone,

That's exactly what I was thinking, buying an R series to save a few bucks, and then she can save to buy an extra lcd monitor. Thanks for all the input.

I do not have a latest and greatest Thinkpad, but I do use AutoCAD and my answer is "it depends"
I use AutoCAD 2004 on an aging A21e with an ATI 8meg graphics card. For straight 2D work, even this is fine

BUT!
IF AutoCAD will be 2008 or newer AND 3D (even limited but routinee use) is used, I stongle recommend you review the supported card published by AutoDesk
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/hc ... s=1&os=256

NVS 140 isn't there (though other models are)

2D ONLY = just about any card
3D = Make sure its a "certified card" or one that supports OpenGL OR DirectX.

You need to know how AutoCAd is going to be used BEFORE you can determine which card

Jim "AutoCAD User"

The older versions of AutoCAD (we have 2006 and earlier at work) we use are 2D, and these run just fine using the integrated Intel chipsets. In fact, the 3D cards (not surprisingly) don't offer any performance over integrated that is noticable to us (except the discrete cards do reduce battery life, so be ware of that).

For 3D work, the other poster is right, and you should be "shopping" off of the list of support/recommended/tested/validated video cards. We have the same issue with Solidworks 3D card.

My dad is running Architectural Desktop 2008(? latest version not sure what it is) on a Inspiron 1505 (1.8ghz, 2gb ram, 128mb X1400) and he says it works perfectly for 2d and light 3d rendering so I would imagine a t61 with the discrete graphics would work ok. Like others have said it depends on what exactly she is doing. High resolution screen is probably a must do to the large number of toolbars.

the answer "it depends on what you are doing in AutoCad" is correct from my point of view. I do MEP engineering, so my work is 2D. However, I also do photometrics work in AGI32 and Lithonia Visual, both of which do 3D rendering. For these, the CPU horsepower seems more important than the graphics card itself. I have no problems using the T61 in my sig for this. My T61 runs this stuff noticeably faster than any of the desktops at work which are mostly P4s with integrated Intel graphics.

I suspect that until you are into extremely large renderings that the NVS140 would be more than adequate. I would think that number crunching for rendering would rank ahead of graphics horsepower for 3D work.

my suggestion is to get her the t61p, that is what I decided on after looking at the options. she will not only be running ACAD but also Rhino, 3DMax and Maya... on top of that she will be working with the adobe suites... running a myriad of render plugins and probably GC and scripting. a dedicated graphics card is a must especially if she wants to be using Vray and Maxwell.... but then again she will be better off with a heafty desktop and a small laptop for presentations but if she is going for the laptop... t61p and max it out because in 2 years it will be completely obsolete for her uses if you don't.