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Laptop recommendations?

fine point

New Member
Hi!
I am buying a RIP dedicated laptop and looking for some recommendations.

there are many high spec machines out there but some of them seem overkill for just RIP. I heard a gaming pc is good for RIP too.

Do you use good RIP laptop you are happy with?

We use ONYX Gama Print on a dedicated HP Laptop and still quite slow.

Please no "Use desktop instead!" comments!

THX
 

AKwrapguy

New Member
We tried the laptop thing with our rip for a little bit. Found it to unstable to use long term. Battery issues, charger issues, graphics issues, processor issues, port issues, when something went wrong it was more expensive to fix and we were down longer. Plus the thing just sat there anyways so having it 'mobile' was a mute point. Your better off saving the money you would spend on a decent laptop and getting a good desktop with a good check of ram.

Why no desktop?
 

rob402

New Member
i use a 17" alienware laptop and i love it. it hardly even gets dusty because sign stuff rarely taxes it enough to make the fans kick on. i got the fancy warranty from microcenter so when it does have an issue, they fix it there and i don't have to deal with dells overseas tech support. they replaced it for me once due to a screen issue, and they were even nice enough to swap the hard drives so i didn't have to lose my programs or transfer my stuff. i love bringing it home for homework as well. rips great. i loaded corel at another sign shop. it took a few seconds to open and before i could apologize, the guy exclaimed "jesus that's fast!". i use it with versaworks dual almost daily and i've never felt like i was stuck waiting :) i agree that it's overkill, but i like and appreciate using nice things.
 

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WildWestDesigns

Active Member
What you have is just as important as how much you have.

I run all my Windows apps in VMs (no direct access to hardwire) and it runs faster then it did on bare metal and they were both using SSDs (in fact, is was the very same SSD) and GBs were available to both. Video card was even the same video card. Biggest differences between the 2 were Xeon processor and ECC ram. Now, while it will do CAD/2D animation work very fast, gaming isn't it's forte. This is a desktop though, but I would imagine that it would be the same results on a laptop form factor as well. If only doing that comparison with other laptops. Trying to take a similar spec'ed laptop versus it's desktop counterpart, desktop usually performs better (in my experience it's been always, but I'm saying usually to cover my bases).

Gaming rigs (depending on the specs) will work, but more from a "brute force" perspective then necessarily from an efficient use of hardware type of perspective. What gamers need isn't necessarily what we need for our software.

Having said that, unless you want to get into the nitty gritty of part specs, sometimes it's just easier to go overkill and not worry about it. "Better to have it and not need it, then to need it and not have it", but that can be quite expensive motto to live by.
 

fine point

New Member
We tried the laptop thing with our rip for a little bit. Found it to unstable to use long term. Battery issues, charger issues, graphics issues, processor issues, port issues, when something went wrong it was more expensive to fix and we were down longer. Plus the thing just sat there anyways so having it 'mobile' was a mute point. Your better off saving the money you would spend on a decent laptop and getting a good desktop with a good check of ram.

Why no desktop?
Because we are in NY and the rent is super high = very small studio!
 
I use an old 2 core processor laptop with 4 gig ram, works perfectly, you don't need anything fancy.
 

Pippin Decals

New Member
I purchased a Lenovo laptop w550s and it has up to batteries in it for longer life. Had the Dvd burner removed when it they built it for me . Quad core 16gb of ram - i7 5500 cpu 16gb ram. This thing is a beast. Check out lenovo website. I paid 2500 for my setup last year or so. Had the windows 10 pro downgraded to 8.1 Pro due to certain drivers having issues with ten. So glad i did it.. I have friends who has big issues with windows 10 .
 
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