Laptop Using For PLC Programming

Ya. There are more then a few older posts in the last year or two discussing plc programming laptops and most if not all of them someone mentions that the MacBook pro they use is one of the better decisions theyve made

I have a good friend with whom I occasionally collaborate on projects. He's a great, smart guy. Unfortunately, he's also an East coast hipster doofus and thus an unapologetic Apple fanboy. He runs Rockwell Software on a partition and has no problems as long as the project in question is Ethernet based. However, every other Linx driver always gives him issues, what works one day doesn't work the next or his connection drops while doing online edits. His solution is to ask for my help when he has to work on large, legacy installations. He could certainly buy a Dell for less than I charge a day, but he won't swallow his pride.
 
I can suggest ASUS if you want the best quality/price ratio.
I have an ASUS with 2 HDD, in one I have the Host OS and in the other one I have the VMs.
With an HQ CPU you are capable of run from 2 to 3 VM. The bottleneck is the HDD in my case.

I've got an Asus 751 with 32 gigs of RAM, and I love it!

I haven't run into a limit as to how many VMs that I can run concurrently as of yet. I remember showing it off once with Rockwell running on one VM, Amiga Forever on another, C64 Forever on another, and Win95 (DosBox) on another. It didn't even slow down.

It's got a great big screen, and enough graphics capacity to do pretty much whatever you want.

It's been in and out of the nastiest places imaginable and still looks brand new.

The only thing that I would recommend is getting a really stout bag for the beast. My first bag (an Alienware bag) lasted about six months. I replaced it with an Everki bag that is outstanding.
 
Just about any PC will work fine, try and find one that does NOT have a ton of preloaded software.... just the minimum and get LOTs of memory

I like the combo of Windows 10 running a VM with Windows 7, have a few VM's if you have a bunch of different software packages you are using, once you build it the way you like it make a image, then you can always reinstall the image if it gets screwed up

I like Dell's but there are a lot of good manufactures, Rootboy's Asus 751 looks nice, if you can go to a store and look at them.... you can tell the "cheap" ones and rule them out, find the one you like and then shop online for the best deal

Best of luck and happy programming!!
 
My last 2 laptops were Dell Precisions that worked well. For my current laptop I went with the Thinkpad P50 mainly because at the time it was the only laptop I found that supported 2 NVMe drives that could be configured as a RAID drive along with room for a normal SATA drive.

If you never experienced an NVMe drive, the difference is huge. My SATA SSD reads a little under 500MB/s, but the NVMe drive reads at almost 3000MB/s. Before loading any software, the time from power up to being logged in was less than 10 seconds. With it now loaded with software, it still only takes about 15 seconds. Boot up time is very important to me because my computer is typically turned on/off at least 10 times per day as I move to different places.

It did cost a bit more and I had to install the drives and load the OS myself (which actually is good because it does not have bloatware), but it has been well worth it.
 
I was getting fed up of not having the freedom of my work laptop (IT restrictions, can't even change the IP address!) so decided to invest in one for myself.

As it's a work thing and I don't run my own business (and my pockets are tight!) I wasn't willing to spend a lot...

I ended up picking up a reconditioned HP EliteBook i5 laptop with 8GB RAM for just over £100 off Amazon! Haven't got the full specs on hand right now...

It's working a treat for what I need and I also run VMware Windows XP machines...

It's not the fastest, it doesn't have the biggest display (resolution is ok and it's super portable) but it certainly does the job and enables me to do what I need without having to rely on IT to give me access to my Laptop (Try getting IT support at 3am!!!)
 
I have a good friend with whom I occasionally collaborate on projects. He's a great, smart guy. Unfortunately, he's also an East coast hipster doofus and thus an unapologetic Apple fanboy. He runs Rockwell Software on a partition and has no problems as long as the project in question is Ethernet based. However, every other Linx driver always gives him issues, what works one day doesn't work the next or his connection drops while doing online edits. His solution is to ask for my help when he has to work on large, legacy installations. He could certainly buy a Dell for less than I charge a day, but he won't swallow his pride.

as an East coster myself i must state that not all of us here are hipster doofus'. but i will also have to take your friends issues into consideration before i make my next purchase then. because if i were to shell out the coin ($1,800ish from a reputable used Mac laptop site) and run into issues like you describe above. i wouldnt be a happy person.
 
I bought a used hp 650 g1 off eBay. Put in a SSD and 16gb ram. Has a real serial port too. The i5 processor is not that fast but good enough for my needs. Runs VM's with no lag. Have around $500 in it.
 
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I'm just went crazy abit, I just move out from W510 to MacBook Pro late 2013.
And now I fall in love with MacBook Pro with running fusion(MacBook version VMware).
 
i wouldnt be a happy person.

About once a month I get a call from someone running a Mac with a PC VM... I just ask "why, why would you do this to yourself?" have a Mac as your computer but if you are programming/troubleshooting why not just have a PC, one that just turns on and communicates to the PLC/Drive/Whatever... our jobs are hard enough we dont need to make them worse
 
I use a Mac too. Its one of the best computers I've ever had. NO issues. I run Fusion to run my VMs. Much more reliable then the Dells I had been using.
 
* Intel i7-xxxxHQ CPU (check the last two letters, it's very important)

I have to say I disagree with you here. There is no need for the CPU to be an Intel Core i7-xxxxHQ. Here is a comparison between a Core i7-6820HK and a Core i7-6700HQ. The 6820HK appears slightly superior to me. And the second link agrees with me.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/88967,88969

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-6820HK-vs-Intel-Core-i7-6700HQ

In fact I would argue that the new Asus ROG Strix GL702ZC would run rings around your Core i7 for programming tasks and that doesn't even have an Intel processor. It uses the new AMD Ryzen platform which goes up to 8 cores and 16 threads.

Whats important is the number of cores, the number of threads, the speed of said threads and the operations per clock cycle. Your needs depend on what you are doing. For instance if you are only running one manufacturers software a dual core 4 thread CPU with 8gb of ram is enough. You only really need lots of cores and lots of ram when you start using virtual machines.

Having said all of that if I was buying a laptop with my companies money I would buy something like the following:
CPU: 4 Core 8 Thread.
Ram: 32GB
SSD: 1TB
Resolution: 1920x1080 minimum
Ports: USB 3.0 Type A and USB3.0 Type C
Monitor: External 4K monitor with USB Type C connection for use while at desk.

Note: I work at an OEM. We have at least 5 different virtual machines and usually I have 2 or more running at one time.

Regards
Ian
 
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I've always gone with the Dell Precision models. If you're running VMs make sure whatever you get has 12GB of memory at the very least, I would recommend 16GB+.

Second this....but I would go with more than 16GB if you use VMs.
I saw a big difference when I went from 16GB to 24GB.

This is a good config from a recent post:
CPU: 4 Core 8 Thread.
Ram: 32GB
SSD: 1TB (to have enough room for VMs)
Resolution: 1920x1080 minimum
Ports: USB 3.0 Type A and USB3.0 Type C
 
I use only VMs as well. Main machine has just VMware on it.
Used to use Dell's but now there just to flimsy for the field.
I now have a ASUS Republic of Gamers PC. Tough as nails. Boots in 6 seconds on 2 128G SSD's in Raid 0 then all my machines are on a 1.5Tb spinning drive, 24G ram.

Only drawback is it does weigh in at 10.5lbs and the power supply is another 2.5lbs. But battery will last 2.5 hours if I don't have to many machines running at once. But in the field I usually only has one for the version of Logix I need and another for the HMI software version needed.

In the office I have had 2 64 bit Win 7, 3 32 bit Win 7, 2 XP and 1 64 bit Win 2012 server all running at the same time. If I had more ram I could start more but that's is a worst case for testing.
 
Absolutely love my Lenovo P50 running windows 7 pro. But it kind of a gaming laptop the way I have it configured w/ the ram and solid state hard drives. but probably should have gone w/ a lower screen resolution. I'm getting old.
 

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