new mobile workstation

[mikepot]

 Well in a few words what i need is a mobile machine (so it will be a notebook) for working with intense 3D programs, namely they are AutoCAD 2012-2013, 3Ds Max, Maya, Revit, Rhino 3D and grasshopper, im an student so i would like that this machines lasts some 4 years working or more if it can, so it has to be open to good upgrades many times. so from what i have read the important things for all that are the GPU, RAM and Processor (that is mainly what a system is xD) so first i had my eyes wrongly in high performances gaming notebooks like the MSI GT70 OND-492 with Geforce gtx 675MX and other gaming machines, but then i saw this page:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...anuf=all&opt=1

i knew that quadros would be better for my machine but they where too expensive when i saw them for the first time, like 6 months ago, but well i read this and then with the same page and searched for the recommended hardware and founded this:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...anuf=all&opt=1

and i started to go to the websites of those companies and founded that the price range with recommended quadro cards was at the same range that the ge force ones that the gaming notebooks that i was looking for in the past had, so i started to configure systems and now i have my tops and i really want recommendations from the people who really know and have experience in this fields, and there you ppl appear, my main doubts are with hard drive configurations and processors, because they are the ones that make the difference in my tops attached

so this are the tops, my doubts are in the field of the hard drive and RAM i noticed that they put the upgrades too expensive, so i thought in making the upgrades by myself, so they all have the less RAM possible, so i wanted to know what you ppl think about that and what RAM i should buy, i thought in a pair of 8gb 1600 mhz of Kingston's in the three cases but i dont know what model, i wonder if you could help me for the less expensive and better ones. Now in the field of the hard drive i was thinking in replacing the HDD (in the m4700 and in the lenovo case) for a m4 512 GB SSD, but they also give the chance of putting an mSATA, but im not sure about this new technology, i want to know if they are as good and fast as any SSD, in that case i was thinking also in the m4 mSATA 256Gb if they perform as good as the SSD; and in the case of the M6600 i was thinking in just putting a 256 Gb SSD as the main drive; in the three cases i choose a normal dvd optical drive thinking in change it for a Blu-ray read and write optical drive as any of this ones:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...+notebook+sata

please help me and give a lot of recommendations in this fields, i will appreciate anything i will buy this notebook really soon so i will love advice in anything, if u have any better choice of anything as the RAM, optical drive, hard drive, even notebook with better performances or better prices please tell me, thank you so much.



P.D: dell also offers something called Intel vPro™ Technology if any of you can explain me or telling me if it i worth i will appreciate it.

METTA

[dgorsman]

Upgrading laptops is usually considered a no-win situation - for the cost and general difficulty involved you are usually better off getting something newer.  Its not some marketing scam, its just a result of getting everything into a space small enough to be reasonably portable and energy efficient.