New Laptop required, help appreciated

castlerock

Hi, my wife needs a new laptop for university and I was just after a bit of help.

Ideally she doesn't want to pay more than £500 but that already seems tricky to what she needs.

She will be specifically running a CAD software program called Rhino which says you need to be able to have -

8 GB memory (RAM) or more is recommended.600 MB disk space.OpenGL 4.1 capable video card is recommended.No more than 63 CPU Cores.Multiple-button mouse with scroll wheel is recommended.The SpaceNavigator is supported.Thanks
David

EndlessWaves

All of those requirements except the 8GB of RAM will be met by every laptop on the market, and many laptops will allow you to add extra memory.

techquest

Having looked around this would be a decent spec and product at £479.99 for a core i7 CPU and an SSD.

HP 250 G6 (Intel Core i7-7500U, 15.6" Full HD Screen, Windows 10 Home, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) Laptop - Grey: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

castlerock

Thanks guys, your help is much appreciated.  I was told by someone who works in our I.T. department that I should be making should that the graphics card is about 4000....  he said 2500 would be too low.  Not sure what this means as I can't see this info on any laptops ive looked at.  :-/

EndlessWaves

It means he's six years out of date. The HD 2500 and HD 4000 were the models of integrated graphics Intel were offering on their CPUs in 2012 and 2013.

About the oldest model of CPU you're likely to come across on the new market are the 7000 series Kaby Lake ones from 2016, such as the one Techquest linked to

techquest

No one on here is going to give you bad advice.

Rhino's spec calls for OpenGL 4.1. The product I listed above, for instance, is OpenGL 4.5 and the rest of the spec is good to go.

Here's a quote by Rhino's developers:
The spec you have provided is the requirements of Rhino. The only thing you left out is it must be a 64 bit OS version, 32bit versions of OS's are not supported.

As @EndlessWaves  states, the details you have provided can be met by practically all current laptops out there.

SpaceNavigator is down to the mouse used. An ordinary mouse would not provide precise enough control when used in  3D CAD type applications. It is not a requirement of the laptop or PC/Workstation.

As to what your IT tech is on about, are you sure it wasn't a reference to the DPI capabilities of the mouse? A CAD type mouse can have a DPI capability of x00's DPI to x0000's DPI and is a requirement of a mouse to be used for cad purposes due to degrees of accuracy. They come in all sizes and price ranges too, anything from £10's to £290   depending on how much you value the use of your mouse in you application. The following link gives you an idea:

Amazon.co.uk: cad mouse

Let us know if you need more help.