Love my laptop, but time for upgrade. any suggestions?

My thinkpad T420 is freaking awesome, but it is time for an upgrade.
Any suggestions?

Im awaiting a P50s being delivered Friday, will let you know.

hi i just got a dell E7470 is nice but ultrabook so no cd drive.Has ethernet port and 3 USB built in. I have Win 7 running on it

I recently purchased a Dell Precision 17" 4k display and I love it for CAD and ladder but it wasn't cheap and it's a beast to transport. I pretty much buy Dell anymore, no drama.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015PYZ0J6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I purchased that one recently. for $150 more you can also get an M.2 sata 512GB drive and another 8GB of RAM. I also bought a 1TB SSD for storage so that my VM's run faster, but you could easily just use the 1TB drive included for that. For under $1K you can get a blazing fast laptop that can handle your VM's and anything else you throw at it without issue.

Right now it would be the Dell XPS or Precision 5000 series. If the new Macbook Pro (Apple event today) isn't port neutered I would consider it, but I'm sure it will be nothing but USB-C ports.

I've used the Dell jstolaruk talks about, no thanks! The power brick for that thing is half the size of the laptop (or so it seems). Even the 15" in that lineup is a hassle to carry but a bit more manageable due to a smaller power brick.

Paully's5.0 said:

The power brick for that thing is half the size of the laptop (or so it seems).

Click to expand...

+1 forgot to mention that!

Anything without a full-size SSD isnt worth considering.
Also, get one with a real docking-station so that you can quickly grab your laptop when you have to leave office quickly.

btw. we use HP Z-books. IT departments decision, but we are happy with it.

Just bought a Dell Precision for one of the tech, the only downside is the battery life is disappointing. Maybe it's the 15" screen size. My 14" Lenovo T440 got 6+ hr battery time and both got SSD.

Some things that were on my list last year:
>=16GB RAM
>=512GB SSD (absolute must have, you consider everything with a mechanical HDD broken when you worked with one)
> 2 USB Ports (2 Licensing dongles + X)
- screen resolution: Some programms had problems with scaling to 3k/4k resolutions that render the program unusable , e.g. EPLAN

What I didn't take into account was the number of cores, I would aim for at least 4 now.
I'm working a lot in the field and having a 17" laptop sitting on your arm the whole day may be a nice workout but not helping you getting your work done...You may want to think about battery life as well.

I ended up ordering a Lenovo Yoga 15, and craving for a P50 ever since... Had no problems with it though (dang it...)

I think you can do nothing wrong with the business oriented lines of HP / Dell / Lenovo / Fujitsu. They will all sell you the same stuff for mostly the same price.

Lenovo had 3x the battery life over Dell, but Lenovo can not do extended ASCII characters with the ALT+ function:
± ° ≤
whereas Dell does it no problem.

Since I use those characters extensively, I opted for Dell and an extra battery.

When I was looking for a backup laptop in case I ran in to issues at a remote job site I got a second T420s. I can't find laptops that have monitor, power, ethernet ports on the back anymore because of the way they all hinge the screen these days. I like to have all the cables run out the back of the laptop when it is on my desk at my office or at the power station instead of taking up space on the side of the laptop where I put my mouse or notebook.

In both my T420s I have 16 GB ram and an SSD, in one I have two SSDs as there is one in the ultra-bay. The T420s could also take another SSD on the mini PCIe or M2 or whatever the interface is that the wifi module plugs in to there is a second unused slot.

I only notice myself wishing for a faster computer when I am connected to 6 PLCs, have two virtual machines running, one with citect running on a project with 9,000 tags, and have 2-3 modbus data loggers running each writing 150 tags to disk every 200ms and this data being plotted in real time all day long. But it didn't used to seem to be a problem so maybe the issue is being low on disk space or not having rebooted since March.

Actually I find the integrated graphics module is a bit less than snappy when I have two external monitors plugged in, (one is a 27" 2550x1400)

I am probably done with lenovo after 10 years of thinkpads I think they have finally turned them in to the same **** as the other manufacturers. I think they have changed the power connector so my collection of half a dozen power bricks (45W, 60W, 90W) won't be compatible with any new Lenovo machines.

people love macbooks, there is supposed to be a new one out today.

I'd also consider the microsoft surface book, I spend a lot of time writing on PDFs for drawing markups and my co-worker really likes his.

Buy your laptops based on the model of the processor
16MB of ram with a weak processor does not accomplish much unless you need 20 windows open at once on a slow computer.

Go here to check the Processors PassMark score compared to others.
Check your old processor. After checking a few you will get a decent sense of what number translates to what power/ computing experience.

Buy your laptops based on this criteria first, then preferred brand and the other stuff. SSD is a must. Makes a Huge difference.

+1 to all pro-SSD comments. Hands down best upgrade to have. Lighter, way faster / more responsive, uses less power. Personally recommend Samsung or crucial brand SSDs.

Anything with an i7, 8gb ram, and 256 SSD, and 4gb video should smash everything needed for programming and most designs.

I prefer gaming systems as their performance is unmatched against standard consumer units. They are bigger and heavier, but nothing a good backpack can't solve!
I just purchased a MSI Dominator to retire my Sony Vaio as it was one of the few I found that had more than 3 USB ports (6 to be exact). As mentioned above - a dongle or two and a mouse would typically fill 2 to 3 usb ports before you even connect to a device.