I need a work laptop (new). Help me out

[Grant H.]

I run around with a Dell Latitude (I think e6540, it's in the truck... I'm being lazy) that has an I7, 16gb of ram, SSD, and (most importantly) 1920x1080 low glare for work. Lots of commonly available laptops have very glossy screens now (cheap screen panels), that SUCK for anything but indoors. Even in a car with some tinted windows, they SUCK!

Running the software suites required for my work, my laptop can't be a slouch.

We, my company, bought 4 of these 3 years ago, and they still continue to run like tops without any significant issues. Mine has had the original 256gb SSD swapped for a Samsung EVO 1TB SSD simply for more space.

In this age of technology, I would strongly suggest no less than 16gb of RAM, and make sure you get an SSD. It's faster, helps with battery life, and makes the laptop survive being in a vehicle much longer than a traditional spinning drive. One of my customers has 900+ trucks on the road here in CO, with a laptop in every single one of them. They have seen a significant drop in IT tickets for laptop issues since moving to SSD's for all their laptops.

Dell has it's own issues, but having a true docking station (like the Dell Pro2x), which very few do anymore, is a huge advantage for me given the movement back and forth between the house and the truck. Having dual 24" monitors, full sized keyboard and mouse, etc at home on my desk makes things much more manageable.

[brutal]

Probably time for a new battery anyway. Try to find a fresh OEM, the aftermarket batts are crap. You should also dial down the full charge setting to get more longevity from them.

Are you actively running anti-malware, etc?

The registry on windoze machines gets ugly over time, may be worth a cleanup or fresh reload if you don't have too many apps installed.

[Irving]

Iego, I know I changed something with the power settings when I was trying to diagnose my wifi constantly dropping this winter. I'll have to go through all that stuff and see what happens. I don't see any reason not to try and keep this computer running as well as possible, even if I get a new one.

As far as the work machines we were taking about earlier, do those come with touch screens now? My wife just bought a laptop and didn't even know it had a touch screen (our kid pointed it out). I don't have a burning desire for a touch screen, but have a feeling that I'll find that I like it if I start using one.

[Gman]

Windows 10 has made touch-screens much more common. If glare is going to be an issue, you don't want touch. A matte noon-touch would be easier to see in bright situations. I don't find much use for a touchscreen on systems that don't convert to tablets, but ymmv.

I replaced my mom's old notebook with an all-in-one with a bigger display. She was surprised to find out that it had a touch-screen.

[iego]

There are a few models of the P52s that I posted earlier that have touch screens, and it looks like the delta in price from non-touch is only $30-40. Like Gman, my personal opinion is that touch is most useful with Windows 10 and tablet devices (using a stylus for note taking, etc.) If your Xactimate application has a lot of "buttons" for input, then touch may be valuable for that too. Lenovo used to make a Mobile Workstation class "Yoga" device that could be transformed into a tablet, but it looks like they have discontinued them. The P52s Mobile Workstations are traditional "Clam Shell" notebook form factors but you can get touch particularly if you like the experience it offers on your wife's device. I'm unsure how it changes working outdoors and will defer to the advice of the others on here in that regard.

If you do only have 4GB of RAM now, that may be a major factor in your slowdown as Brian said, and RAM is pretty cheap to add. I posted an Amazon Link above. You could do a single 8GB stick (likely you have a single 4GB stick now) and go to 12GB for $63, or just bite the bullet and get a pair of matching 8GB sticks.

Here are your battery replacement SKUs, if you want to try a "fresh" one of those. The 9-Cell is bigger and heavier, but has more juice. The 6-cell would be lighter if you are climbing around on roofs with it. You could have (2) 6-cell batteries you could swap out to get you through a day, etc.

ThinkPad Battery 70+ (6 cell) 0A36302
https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Batter...70_&dpSrc=srch
ThinkPad Battery 70++ (9 cell) 0A36303
https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Batter...70_&dpSrc=srch

-John

[Irving]

I'm not climbing with it, usually stays in the car. I like to bring it inside to sketch interior losses though. I haven't even really used the touch screen, so I've not had an experience where I think it might be useful and can definitely go without it. Xact has moved to many mobile platforms, but the last time I was required to use the mobile stuff I wasn't that impressed with it and prefer the full version. Basically that means that if I'm already on a laptop, there is no way I'm going to use some tablet version just to utilize the touch screen feature. I'll have to look up my specs when I get home today.
Brian, the machine is a W520 (not 530) if that matters. Thanks so much everyone.

[Gman]

You could do a single 8GB stick (likely you have a single 4GB stick now) and go to 12GB for $63, or just bite the bullet and get a pair of matching 8GB sticks.

I'd recommend that you use matching pairs of SO-DIMMs (2x4GB, 2x8GB, etc.). Even if you only add another 4GB stick, you will get the advantage of theoretically doubling the memory throughput by taking advantage of 'dual channel mode'.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mult...l_architecture

Disk I/O is typically the limiting factor in most computers, so an SSD helps immensely. You also don't have the risk of heads bouncing off the spinning platters of a HDD while the notebook is moving. You also get the reduced electrical load of the spinning disk and moving the armature of the heads across the disk.

If you're looking into a new system and you see the SSD options of a 2.5" or M.2 SATA drive vs. an NVMe drive, go for the NVMe drive. NVMe drives are incredibly fast since they sit on the system bus and don't have to be behind a SATA controller (adding another link in the chain).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express

Sent from my electronic leash using Tapatalk

[iego]

Good point about the matching memory pairs, Gman, it's always bugged me that they (Lenovo) sell these things with a single stick populated.

Here's the 2nd 4GB stick if you want to go that route, Irving. This will leave you with 8GB, and two matching 4GB sticks for dual-channel architecture, as Gman pointed to above.
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Singl...=CT51264BF160B

-John

[Irving]

If you want to try and diagnose to see if that is or is not a factor in your xactimate performance, there are a few things you can try, however if you have a computer guy you trust you might be better off asking for their help.

I looked at the manual for your W520...
https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/m...w520_ug_en.pdf

And it sounds like the quickest test to see if you have the Optimus installed and enabled is to "Right-click on the desktop and select NVIDIA Control Panel. The NVIDIA Control Panel opens." If you do that, you are likely good to go, and the Optimus is not related to your xactimate performance issues.

If however the NVIDIA Control Panel is not an option, then there are a number of places you would need to check for potential problems. The easiest would be to right click on "my computer" (or sometimes just "computer") in Windows File Explorer, and go into device manager. Or you can use the start menu and search for "device manager."

In device manager, you should see something like this...

Attachment 74540

On your computer, you should see something about Optimus, or NVIDIA, along with or in place of the Intel Display Adapter listed. (Yours will look different from mine, just pointing you to the area.)

If it's in there, but has a yellow exclamation point on it, or there are other things with yellow exclamation points, then it is possible you may need to update drivers.
https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/p...w520/downloads

Now is the time to call in a favor from your computer guy, if you have one. If you don't I could try and help remotely, etc., if you wish.

You may be missing one or more drivers, etc. There are Lenovo tools on that support site I linked above that will scan your system to look for missing drivers like Lenovo System Update.
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht003029

If everything looks good in device manager, then it may be your Power Settings, or BIOS.

From the manual I linked above, for the Optimus driver to switch to the discrete NVidia Graphics Card, it has to think it has the "power" to do that. Namely that it is plugged in and not running on battery, and that the Windows Power Settings are set in a way that do not limit performance in favor of saving the battery. To check your power saving settings, use the start button and search for "power saving" and go into that control panel and try and change your settings to settings that will allow the computer to perform at its highest power potential without any regard for power savings or battery savings.

If none of that works, and the device itself does not show in device manager, then we would have to check the BIOS of the computer and make sure it is not disabled there. There are some pages in the manual that describe this procedure as well.

Lastly, we should make sure before you go down this path that we identify exactly what model laptop you have just so we know what it should have. There's a chance it doesn't even have Optimus, although unlikely. If you look on the bottom of the laptop, potentially under the battery, you should be able to find the model number and/or serial number. If you will post that information I can double check the features that your notebook is supposed to have.

I'm about as far away from Thornton as one can get without leaving town, but if you want some help with this I would give it a go as I enjoy these sorts of things, and making computers work to their potentials. I'm typing to you on my 2008 built homebrew machine. Still does what I need it to do.

-John

PS. Edit to add, that you might start by checking your power saving settings, as that would explain the change in performance. Maybe as your battery got less and less powerful over time, you dialed down your performance settings in an attempt to conserve battery, and now the device is not (ever) engaging Optimus mode, and therefore xactimate is suffering. So start by checking that.

I followed everything in this post. I checked and I do have the Nvidia Quadro 1000M and the other one. They both looked good for drivers. I tried looking for updated drivers and one of them was up to date and it's installing updated drivers for Nvidia right now. I also got into the power savings and made sure it was on maximum performance for the graphics card when plugged (it wasn't). I did the same for PCI Express, even though I don't know what that is.

Thank you for the help so far.

[Irving]

Just an update that after following John's advice I think I can get some more time out of this laptop. Thank you everyone who contributed ideas and posted about their experience with their machines.