Hi all,
I’m in need of a new laptop as mine is dying. Even crashed whilst on a skype call with a client recently. Great first impression.
I was wondering what makes Captivate happy for performance, and if any of you have recommendations on any models. Budget is up to £1,000, which is around $1,262.90, according to Google, as of today.
I would prefer a laptop over a desktop for portability and for taking it to meetings etc.
Thanks
Luke
For portability and flexibility, I adore my Surface Pro, which is now 3 years old and running Win 10. I’m planning to get the i7 Pro 4 fully loaded in September.
To compensate for the smaller screen size, I picked up a Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter (about $49; https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-us/products/adapters/wireless-display-adapter-2/p3q-00001 ) that allows me to connect my Surface (as well as my Android phone) to any Digital Display (LED TV, flat panel monitor, billboard, etc.) that has 1 free HDMI and 1 free USB port available. The pair together have been wonderful to use for professional presentations when I don’t know what hardware will be available (and don’t want to lug a zillion adapter cables with me).
Luke just buy the best machine you can for the budget you have in mind. Don’t worry too much about brands since all this stuff is built in factories using parts from various manufacturers.
I would make sure you get a Core i7 processor (as many cores as you can get in a mobile chip), 16 GB of RAM, spend the extra money to get an SSD for storage, and make sure you have a decent graphics processor (Captivate will gladly use it).
2 years ago I purchased something along those lines and went with a 17″ screen. I don’t regret that being my daily device but I hate it when I go on the road with it (too big).
As far as buying a Mac is concerned, some Mac users are complaining about the performance of Captivate on the Mac. Also, I’ve never been a fan of buying a laptop that is three times the price of other similar machines on the market.
My Mac laptop is 7 years old and my MacMini (2.3 Ghz, 8 GB RAM, only 512mb graphics card)) is 6, so I have had it in the back of my mind as to what I want to be looking for when one of them dies. One think I am absolutely going to be looking for is the capability to do WebGL. I am already consistently hitting things that are WbGL that I cannot play due to the age of my graphics cards.
As to speed, I can run Captivate easy on these old machines and do not notice speed issues, so I would think and newer model will have no issues with processing speed so long as you do not skimp on RAM down to the barest minimum.
I currently have a Dell Latitude that is up on lease this month and it is being replaced by another Dell but soon to be a macbook pro as soon as IT gets around to approving it. I have tested the same files on my Dell (quad-core i7/16gb) and a macbook air (dual-core i5/4gb) and the macbook air is able to process/render as fast or faster than the windows machine. They both work great but it really comes down to user preference, windows vs macOS, and if you have any OS specific applications. If you go Mac, check the refurbished page on apple’s site as they typically have some pretty good deals.
Since this is a work laptop, have you looked into leasing it instead of buying it outright? Our company leases all our laptops for tax reasons I believe, but it keeps us current (3 year lease) and we don’t worry about the equipment getting 6-7 years old.
Hi Dennis,
Thanks for your reply.
I had forgotten about the leasing option. I’m definetly going to look into this. I have no preference with the OS. The most important thing for me is as much speed and performance possible.
I’m going to do some research and think leasing would be the better way.
Thanks again.
Luke
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