Reply to: The Serious Laptop Thread

[BoredBloke]

I've tried working like that in the past, but it just doesn't do it for me. Crap wi-fi (Probably my biggest issue - hotel wireless is tulipe and 3 Mobile have now limited tethering), needing a PC turned on at home, bothering with Dynamic DNS etc. Not knocking it if it works for you, but I'd rather just have everything I need on the road with me.

The thing about 3 depends on the tarriff you were on. I have a 3 monthly rolling sim with all you can eat data that I have in a cheap android phone. I checked with them and they confirmed that my plan still allowed unlimited data and tethering. As I understood it, all the one plan tarriffs which allowed all you can eat data that were running before they announced the change in tethering will continue to allow unlimited data.

FWIW - the throughput I was getting on the 3 mobile last nioght was pretty tulipe!

[Churchill]

NOIP for the DNS stuff is rock solid app on your host system that comes on at boot up, have to verify it ever 30 days but that's not a biggie.

Alcatel Y800 with a three SIM card, 15gb a month for £15 and 4g speeds where available

No problem

Verify every 30 days? You're an effin skinflint, it's only a few dollars a year for the full version!

[CloudWalker]

job done

[SimonMac]

I've tried working like that in the past, but it just doesn't do it for me. Crap wi-fi (Probably my biggest issue - hotel wireless is tulipe and 3 Mobile have now limited tethering), needing a PC turned on at home, bothering with Dynamic DNS etc. Not knocking it if it works for you, but I'd rather just have everything I need on the road with me.

NOIP for the DNS stuff is rock solid app on your host system that comes on at boot up, have to verify it ever 30 days but that's not a biggie.

Alcatel Y800 with a three SIM card, 15gb a month for £15 and 4g speeds where available

No problem

[vwdan]

I have a MBP for carrying around, 8GB ram, Core i5 512GB SSD, I use this to RDP via VPN back home where I have a pimped out desktop for anything that needs a bit of grunt

I've tried working like that in the past, but it just doesn't do it for me. Crap wi-fi (Probably my biggest issue - hotel wireless is tulipe and 3 Mobile have now limited tethering), needing a PC turned on at home, bothering with Dynamic DNS etc. Not knocking it if it works for you, but I'd rather just have everything I need on the road with me.

[SimonMac]

I have a MBP for carrying around, 8GB ram, Core i5 512GB SSD, I use this to RDP via VPN back home where I have a pimped out desktop for anything that needs a bit of grunt

[vwdan]

After much looking and with the cash burning a hole in the bank I found a refurbished (transit damaged - it has three indentations on the lid) laptop that was £2000 below the retail price (£1600 instead of £3600).

Core i7 - 4900MQ
16GB RAM
K4100M Quadro GFX
500GB SSD
500GB 7200 RPM Drive
DVD R/W

Very very happy with it - I'm not really a Dell fan and they were never a first choice, but the cost has just blown everyone else out of the water. It's a really nice machine, very sturdy and it looks the part (I.e., dull and corporate). Plenty of connectivty with HDMI, DisplayPort, USB 3.0 and a card reader - just can't fault it really.

[doodab]

I'm moving towards tremendously portable these days - getting old and fed up with lugging all the power round with me, it makes sense (for me) to run everything in the home office and just terminal onto it from an ultra lightweight.

I'm for meeting in the middle. I have a powerful desktop at home and then a reasonably beefy 14" laptop that will let me run most of what I need standalone. I can't go any lighter than that as it tends to come with an 8GB RAM limit and / or unusably tiny screen. I do have a lightweight convertible laptop as well and it's OK for meetings and watching TV in bed but I can't do serious dev work on it.

[MasterBlaster]

How about one of these with all sliders to the right?

http://mysn.co.uk/xmg-p724

[Bacchus]

That's not a tremendously portable solution.

I'm moving towards tremendously portable these days - getting old and fed up with lugging all the power round with me, it makes sense (for me) to run everything in the home office and just terminal onto it from an ultra lightweight.

I guess if ClientCo is locked down and you're on their network it might not work, but if you're in isolation even a good 3G connection is fast enough, 4G would walk it

[doodab]

I would tend to buy a lower spec one with the CPU, screen & graphics I wanted and upgrade the RAM & SSD myself. The model DP posted is particularly expensive because of the top of the range NVidia Quadro pro grade GPU. If you aren't running Autocad or something for a living you can probably get away with a lower spec one.

HP ZBook 17 Mobile Workstation - 1... | F0V52EA#ABU | £1,631.99 | Insight UK

looks more like it, add another £600 for 32GB RAM upgrade and a 1TB SSD and you have a pretty mean machine.

[doodab]

Virtualised servers better suited to a couple HP Microservers plus another as NAS device?

That's not a tremendously portable solution.

[MicrosoftBob]

Not quite z book spec is it?

HP ZBook 17 Mobile Workstation - 1... | F0V45EA#ABU | £5,111.99 | Insight UK

£6,134.39 and it doesn't even have a bluray player and is only 1080p that is pretty rubbish.

[Scruff]

Virtualised servers better suited to a couple HP Microservers plus another as NAS device?

[vwdan]

Not quite z book spec is it?

HP ZBook 17 Mobile Workstation - 1... | F0V45EA#ABU | £5,111.99 | Insight UK

Haha, in fairness, you have picked the super high specced one. I'm hoping to pick something up for 1500-2000 refurbished. I need to do more reading on graphics cards, I think, though - I'm woefully lacking knowledge.

That Asus you posted actually looks like a nice bit of kit for the cash - but, as lame as it sounds, I like the "pro IT engineer" look of the others - the Asus is a bit "PC World", maybe. I know I shouldn't care, but people do pay attention to looks and I spend 99% of my life in the corporate world.

By the way, for anyone wondering why I'm willing to spend so much - firstly, I'm hoping it's going to last 3 - 4 years. £500 per annum for the tool that helps me earn every penny I bill doesn't seem bad. Secondly, I need something that'll let me do proper lab work such as virtualising a dozen servers and finally, I want something that can do some good quality video editing and hopefully anything else I feel the need to throw at it over the next few years.