OT: Laptop Recommendations 2020

+1 for Precision

My first laptop with my company was an HP and it eventually cooked the HD are fried 1 of the ram sticks.

I asked them to find me a dell, IT handed me a Precision 3530 and I have had zero issues with it. I don't run VM with it, so I cant contest how well it will handle the VM world.

I've been farmed out to 2 other facilities and they have issues with the HP computers they were given. Our new IT standard is HP, but they are thinking of switching to Dell computers for the controls group.

HP have different price ranges.

Elite and Spectre are the very thin kind that managers crave, top specs but bad internal cooling due to them being so thin.
Pro-Book are the medium workhorses for the masses.
Z-Book is the higher-end 'normal' laptop.

The Dell Latitude "portable workstation" I have now is heavy and burn through battery fast. The CPU % would go high for no good reason all the time. I'm not really sure the diffrence between the Latitude and precision line.

The best one I ever had was a Lenovo with extended battery.

The feature I would look for is a USB-C charging to reduce the amount of power adopter I have to carry.

I was happy with my old Dell Precision M4600. Except RS-232, it had all kinds of ports and readers. Even a CD/DVD-drive. Last year I replaced it with a Precision 5520, not checking the specs to closely, since I expected a new Precision to be an enhancement. What a disappointment! Of course the CPU and memory now keeps up with new Windows 10 and latest software. It may look sleek and slim in a sales meeting. But the hardware is so stripped down to save weight. It doesn't even have a Ethernet port! So now I have to carry a mess of cables, adapters, docking station, DVD drive and stuff.

Dell used to be pretty good in bespoke laptops, although it is some years ago, we managed to get laptops with 232, PCMCIA etc. but it was purchased as a legacy hardware add on. Not sure they can still do it though, it was in the early days where 232, dvd etc. were dis-continued.

I am a plant engineer and use a Thinkpad P1 gen 2 for all my applications. I have dropped that multiple times on accident due to a lack of flat space on the factory floor, but it prevails!

I also carry a USB-C 20000 mAh battery pack on me sometimes, but only sometimes hwen my battery is super low. I keep this in my pant-pocket.

Also, warranty on Lenovo is amazing, as I can call in and get onsite next day support. 300 bucks for a 3 year accidental damage protection next day onsite. Not bad.
Plus the specs are awesome.

I use a 17' MSI gaming laptop

Its a beast to carry around, but nice to work on, you can't feel the heat on the keyboard

Holmux said:

I use a 17' MSI gaming laptop

Its a beast to carry around, but nice to work on, you can't feel the heat on the keyboard

Click to expand...

Which model are you using. How is the Msi build?

I just ordered a Lenovo P15 with a i7-10750H (6 Core)


I ordered with 8GB of ram and 512GB SSD. I bought 2x32GB and a 2TB SSD separately as it is upgrade-able, and less than half the cost of what Lenovo charges.


4K monitor too


This thing tops out at 4x32GB for 128GB total which is why I got it. I have 32GB on my current laptop and running 2 VMs maxes it out, even if they only use 8GB a Piece.


It's going to be October before I get it. I will post back on how I like it then.


Don't get a consumer grade laptop they are garbage. Sure they may have assume specs but Chassis, Display, Keyboard, trackpad etc all suck compared to a business grade laptop.


I have an inspiron currently. it was fit for poor college kid not someone that

The Lenovo people told me that I should look at T15. Not sure what the difference bwteen T15 vs P15.

Do update us on how you like it and what's the battery life is like.

Another plus for Dell Precision.
Precision 7730
They now support NVME drives.
I have 32gb memory and 4 1TB SSDs. VMs and Acronis backups...no issue.

bornwild said:

Which model are you using. How is the Msi build?

Click to expand...

The model is "GT72S"

I upgraded the SSD to 250G and the ram to 48G