I went with a Thinkpad W520 because I couldn't afford the Dell M6800
(because it was still new). The W520 is upgradeable to 64GB Ram (which to
me is most important for Oracle VMs). Popped in an SSD and a 64 GB SD
Card. Also has room for an m-sata and can exchange the CD-rom for an SSD
if I want.
The M6800 (and potentially the M6700) is better for expanding storage and
ram but was too pricey when I was looking. Got the W520 for like $400 on
Ebay IIRC. The m6700 are a bit higher still and the m6800 are still
anywhere from $900-$2000 (but ultimately the better laptop workstation). I
still hope to get an m6800 eventually.
Chris
On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 7:42 AM, Rich J <rjoralist3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 2016/10/24 18:42, Mark J. Bobak wrote:
It comes down to budget. As others have said, for multiple VMs, 16GB
minimum. On the high end, you could go as crazy as 64GB, and up to 2TB of
SSD. Of course, through high end could be north of USD $5k, which may be
more than your IT department is willing to cover.
I priced out a ThinkPad p70, 17.3" 4k display, XEON CPUs, 64GB, and 2TB of
SSD is probably the most that money can buy (that I'm aware of). It is
also worth looking at if you go with 1080p display, NON-XEON CPUs, 16GB
and a 1/2TB SSD, it'd be closer to $2k, and you still have a laptop that's
upgradeable to 64GB in the future.
For those on stricter (personal or BYOD?) budgets, a refurb Dell Latitude
E6430 with a i7-3720QM can be had for ~$400 US on ebay, adding a little
more for RAM and storage. The "old" 3rd-gen i7 should be about as fast as
the most recent Intel Core i7-6700HQ, at least according to
cpubenchmark.net, FWIW. Or a refurb M6700, heavy with its larger screen
and multiple drive bays that would easily allow separating one's VMs from
the OS, might be another budget-friendly idea. At those prices, a spare
becomes affordable (or annual upgrades/replacements).
Just a thought. YMMV
Rich
