Recommendations please for quality laptop xp or 7 Rhino friendly

Rhino Windows Hardware
#1

Hi,
Aside from my purpose built Rhino Tower…

I am considering getting a replacement laptop to my Toshiba Qosmio G20-115 I sometimes use after it now has developed a cooling issue.

What can you recommend ? not current model though, as I am not after win8 unless I can load 7 onto it.

Win XP or 7 but not 8. (XP best OS and I shall miss it, win explorer in 7 is a nightmare, and 8 can go take a running jump ! )

Mine has a nice quality 17inch screen where black is black, well almost…
Toshiba TruBrite WXGA+ TFT display 1440 x 900 res

Its a bright TFT display, not sure if that is standard practice now, a few yrs ago this was eye candy. Its the thing that still pleases me when I turn it on. Other standard lappys look poor compared to this beast. Its solid and feels really well built.

Quality keyboard

Somewhat low on specs compared to current standards though. 128Mb ram Nvidia Go 6600 vid card and not apparently swoppable., being soldered in ? certainly on the 108 model.

2.13GHz and 2Gb ram and thats max ram :frowning:

Importantly Must be virtually silent running !.…this isnt. noise is not something manufacturers design for and its spoilt this one. Expensive kit then spoilt with cheap fans that get noisy in time.

Steve

#2

Don’t worry, Windows 10 is coming soon!

#3

One of these might do…
or one of these perhaps…

–Mitch

#4

I have the Lenovo W530. It works well, is relatively quiet and has a good (though expensive) dock available.

I have to say though after the whole superfish thing I will be looking elsewhere for my next laptop.

Steve, unfortunately power and noise tend to come hand in hand, especially in a laptop. You could hold out for one of the new intel broadwell CPUs. They are supposed to use less power and thus run cooler. This should translate into running quieter however that remains to be seen. Unfortunately this will probably lock you in to windows 8 unless you wait even longer for windows 10.

#5

Given price of the Lenovos, I can see this will have to be an ebay 2nd hand purchase.

win7 or XP.

What are you guys and gals using that I might find on ebay etc ?

Sounds like power for power laptops are noisy compared to Towers then ?

Steve

#6

Me too. That’s not something you can turn the other cheek to.

#7

If you try to cram everything in to a small space then you have to do more to actively cool it. Shrinking a fan down to fit in whilst still pushing enough air to cool it comes with some compromises as well.

#8

Hi,
I wonder if there is a way of obtaining quiet running components for laptops just as have been made available for towers etc. Pain though having to spend even more money making them better.

I see that win 8.1 can be made decent by running classic shell, or as some do, nuke 8 altogether and install 7, though 7’s explorer interface is still a pain, folders that look open, no tree at left , files I cant find yet they are there. Many hits on youtube on removing the win8 interface… maybe a win8 then nuke the 8 part of it. so maybe a win8 laptop yet.

So what laptop that has a superb screen and quality feel ? It will still havw to be second hand. Cant aford new prices for what is a secondary bit of kit for when I fancy watching tv and working.

Steve

#9

What does this mean?

#10

Steve,
Windows 7 64bit with full support for 32gb of ram is hands down the winner over good ole XP. I loved XP but 7 has everything you need and then some. You might take a tour of setting up explorer, I’ve got it running pretty much the same way I had on XP.
As for quietness issues, when I need a quiet running situation I just switch over to a lower power mode on my Sager (though all laptops these days will have a similar setting) and my fans will never kick in. Cuts me down to half or less of my top end cpu speed but as we all know good ole Rhino doesn’t need full horsepower most of the time unless rendering or something else intense.
Make sure to get a good sized solid state drive as well. Saves weight, power, noise, heat and headache.

#11

I think he’s missing this:

#12

OK, got it. I guess I didn’t spend enough time in XP then…

#13

XP = (e)Xperience Poplar

1 Like
#14

It does make it better but 8 is still a downgrade from 7 IMHO. Looking forward to 10. I know a couple of people who are running the beta and they’re pretty happy with it.

#15

ahahah nice one Mitch

#16

You might decide what hardware capability you want.

Sadly, some of the ATI chips appear to have been doing reverse faces with Rhino, but hopefully, that will improve. Until then, it looks like nVidia has the upper hand. The Maxwell GPUs have better power saving, and Pascal, not to be confused with the ever-helpful Pascal, here, will be faster and lower power consumption yet.

I understand you wanting quiet. All the panels in my desktop are lined with indoor-outdoor carpet for noise control. Power and Quiet is hard. Silent is unlikely with any laptop with a fan.

Oddly, a SSD might help with fan noise, as it did with my roomate’s Mac Mini, which has a sexy but stupid thin fan slot, that used to sound like a turbine engine on full afterburner, while watching videos, but a SSD helped it drop just enough to be better behaved.

A quad will help with rendering. The current larger mobile quads allow 32GB of memory; some do not. On the downside, most of a Quad’s power is lost except for rendering. Though, there is so much speed talk here that, I suspect threading will be more utilized in Rhino 6. I believe there is some talk of it around here as well.

[Have you looked at the Lenovo 541? I have a W540, and have found it to be a pretty good laptop, in spite of the trackpad. The new W541 has a proper trackpad. The machine runs fairly quiet for Rhino, until you render. The palmrest gets a little warm. Unplugged, the processor throttles bad, but you have 5-7 hours of battery doing office tasks. The screen is arguably the best 15" laptop display made.

Thinkpads didn’t come with superfish. I am glad Lenovo got raked over the coals on that; what were they thinking?]

My friend has had Alienware. They are wicked fast, made well, but seem to need new GPU boards after a few years. The positive side: they boards can be replaced.

I’ve looked at Asus gaming laptops, but lost interest when I saw that some keyboards were taped on.

MSI is making some big GPU laptops, but quiet they may not be.

The Dell Precisions have a pretty good reputation for a workstation. I am hoping that they put some higher resolution screens in their workstations.

Generally, high-end anything doesn’t seem to be as reliable as mainstream anything.

#17

No, and I couldn’t find any trace of it on my laptop however the precedent has been set and it speaks to the general philosophy at Lenovo now. They just got caught with this one. Who knows what else they have put on their machines.

I would rather not find out that there is something else after the fact.

I will be voting against this with my wallet in the future.

#18

allowing for confusion, a chance for some light heartedness …McNeel to monitor food intake to maximise efficiency of helpful staff. :smile:

Tree…actually that tree would make some use of what is now a void.

Why win7 decided to hide folder tree at left is beyond me. I am running Classic Shell in win7 64 pro to try and get back the evolutionary peak of XP in explorer, yet it still requires clicking on + boxes at left to see the tree, I dont find address line so useful. I like to see where I am and what other folder are nearby. If I wanted a blank space I could click - and retract, wish Msoft wouldnt predict my wishes.

Is anyone with a 17inc monitor, I couldnt go smaller after working on 17inch. The screen is everything. bright, sharp and black blacks. I will be with mouse. What model have you ?

but mainstream is cheap and plasticy and smaller screens ?

Sounds good, (pun !) but what if I start doing something that sees vid card needing to work harder, will the system melt down ?

yes SSD HD or all as SSD will lessen heat so lessen noise. win 7. 17inch monitor. quiet running fan off mode. Well built, likely to be available 2nd hand, so what would give that model wise ?

Steve

#19

Dunno what’s wrong with your Win7, but I’ve had tree views on the left in Vista, 7, 8, 8.1…

#20

http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/toshiba-qosmio-g25/replace-cooling-fans-1.htm

Steve

You could try cleaning it. our replacing the fans.

James