2016 Best Laptop for VM ware

what is the best laptop to buy now for vm ware? We are going to get a few ned laptops and now all our vm ware machines are on different laptops because they all have low hard drive storage and low ram.

what are some good brands and models to look at?

You should search the forums for this, plenty of computer questions.

Personally, if work was supplying the laptop I'd want the Dell Precision 5000 series, 15", 16GB ram minimum and a 512 SSD minimum. This is essentially the same thing as the Dell XPS primary difference is the graphics I believe.

I'd throw the Macbook Pro as an option too, well, once they release the 2016 version. The current Macbook Pro's are dated and need a refresh.

EDIT: As awesome as these 4K super high resolution displays are, most software doesn't scale properly. For the time being make sure you stick with the 1080p version.

Anything with a lot of processor horsepower and memory with a SSD.

If you are unfamiliar with processor types go to: http://www.cpubenchmark.net or simply google the processor number in the laptop you are looking at and click on the Cpubenchmark.net link in the google results.

With todays technology and what is available I would not consider anything without a score of less then 7000.

Dell makes a good product and the warranty and support is top notch.
Precision Workstations for hardcore business machine, XPS is nice but not as business hardened as Precision, older Latitudes in the 6xxx line are now the Precision line is you were looking at used.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m7510-workstation/pd?oc=xctomp751015us

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd?ref=PD_OC

Lenovo is also quite good.
P50 Workstation Line
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p50/

T460s Line
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t460s/

I haven't seen the new Lenovo new first hand but 2 years ago Dells LCDs were nicer.

I own both a Lenovo T540p with i7-4700MQ processor and a Dell Latitude E6530 with a i7-3740QM processor and 16GB ram. They are both tanks.

Tim Ganz said:

what is the best laptop to buy now for vm ware? We are going to get a few ned laptops and now all our vm ware machines are on different laptops because they all have low hard drive storage and low ram.

what are some good brands and models to look at?

Click to expand...

Dell precision 5000 or 7000, as much RAM as you can, minimum 16GB, SSD HDD.

What are you using your VMs for? Are they going to run concurrently or one at a time?

What are your storage needs? How much battery life do you need?

BTW, have you looked at moving to Virtualbox instead? WMware has recently fired all their developers for Workstation and the future of the product is at the moment uncertain.

Personally I wanted a lightweight machine (4lbs or less), with a reasonable sized screen (15.6") and usable resolution (1080p) and a host of connectors that I need (full size ethernet port, 3 or more USB ports, hdmi, sdcard reader) and user replecable memory, harddrive and battery. And spill proof keyboard. And I wanted it to have a docking station option as well. This limits the field considerably.

I bought a model of the Toshiba Z50 and put in a 500GB enterprise grade SSD and 16GB RAM and I run Windows 7 pro on it. I also got extended world-wide warranty for it.
http://us.toshiba.com/computers/laptops/tecra/Z50

I have a MacBook Pro, late 2013. Plenty powerful for VMs, 2.6 core i7, 1TB SSD,NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB video card. But it wasn't cheap.

Pete.S. said:

BTW, have you looked at moving to Virtualbox instead? WMware has recently fired all their developers for Workstation and the future of the product is at the moment uncertain.

Click to expand...

They are moving dev to China so the story goes.....

The Dell Precision Series is a good choice I have had 8 of those with no issues.

HP has the Z series workstations and the laptop version is really nice we use the laptops and the desktop versions of HP Z series and we have had no issues with them and they provide great performance.

I don't buy Dell's anymore. Just to flimsy for field work. I have a Asus G73 Series. It's basically a gaming laptop. Dual 256G SD Drives in Raid 0 for operating system (Windows 8, but I only run VM) 1.5TB spinning drive. 24G ram.
This thing is rock solid. A dell you can feel it bend just picking it up with one hand. This thing you can grab with both hands and try to twist it and it wont give. Granted it's 10.5lbs. But for startups where I need to move around a lot, I just terminal in with my iPad Air.

JaxGTO said:

I don't buy Dell's anymore. Just to flimsy for field work. I have a Asus G73 Series. It's basically a gaming laptop. Dual 256G SD Drives in Raid 0 for operating system (Windows 8, but I only run VM) 1.5TB spinning drive. 24G ram.
This thing is rock solid. A dell you can feel it bend just picking it up with one hand. This thing you can grab with both hands and try to twist it and it wont give. Granted it's 10.5lbs. But for startups where I need to move around a lot, I just terminal in with my iPad Air.

Click to expand...

If you buy cheap, low end models, they are flimsy. You but a Business Class Dell Precision it is Anything but flimsy. Thing is built like a tank. Full magnesium chassis AND magnesium screen frame. Your assessment is not accurate.

I will take a look at all the suggestions so thank you to all.

Personally I was tired of cheap **** (Acer) and went to a Dell and couldn't be happier. primary difference between the 2 (aka where they save that money) is the Battery. performance was great.on both. but batteries don't last worth a **** after 4 months on the Acer. my New Dell is 2 years and still strong. in fact my used Dell is like 9 Years old and still has better battery life than the Acer. lol

But yeah Asus is a quality machine as well

I'm using a ASUS, and I would suggest it the best brand I ever had

You can check out this site when you're looking up machines to get.

What about Linux as a host? If you run VirtualBox it was designed to run on Linux; that means you don't waste CPU & RAM running two versions of Windows (host + VM session).
...but you can also run VMware workstation on Linux if you like that better.


Do it yourself and go with a Lenovo:
Spill resistant keyboard, Glass fiber plastic frame with MIL-STD-810G military certification.
http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad%20T460/ThinkPad_T460_Platform_Specifications.pdf


Or if you need high performance AND style, try System76
https://system76.com/laptops/serval