Dell thuds down low-cost lap workstation for cheap frugal creatives or engineers

Dell has introduced an entry-level mobile workstation, the 15.6-inch Precision M2800, to fill the gap between business-level laptops and top-of-the-line mobile workstations such as the 17.3-inch Dell Precision M6800 and HP ZBook 17 Mobile Workstation. Dell Precision M2800 mobile workstation Yes, it's a Core i5 or i7 laptop …

[Voland's right hand]

What's the point?

HP220 and other high end fusion based systems can run circles around this. They all allow to install as much memory as you can stuff in them. I have yet to see one that will not eat 16G and smile. The CPU is comparable in speed to i5 (and to i7 for the higher end model), the on-APU Radeon is about the same as the discrete part on this and it costs 350$ before you stuff it with memory.

[MondoMan]

Re: What's the point?

Isn't the HP220 a desktop, not a laptop?

[Davidoff]

Re: Isn't the HP220 a desktop, not a laptop?

Actually there is no 'HP220'. There's a HP z220, though.

[Voland's right hand]

Re: What's the point?

http://www.misco.co.uk/product/Q656961/HP-255-AMD-Quad-Core-A4-5000-15-6-IN-4GB-500GB-DVDRW-Windows-8-Laptop-Notebook-PC

Apologies -255, not 220.

Costs 1/3 of the cost of the dell, has higher spec. All you need is to throw out the miserable amount of RAM HP sticks into it and put two 8G DIMMs. It will eat them and smile. Total BOM ~ 400£ so half the Dell.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: What's the point?

> Costs 1/3 of the cost of the dell, has higher spec.

Yep, pigs fly low. The entire hardware costs less than the Windows + Office license(1)

Although...

> Windows 8

Well...

1: license only for a wheelchair-bound differently abled person who cannot use hands or feet - check at Microsoft.com whether you are using the appropriate license - ; one language only; you may not use a keyboard or mouse; no running in virtual machines allowed; you must use the Outlook Abortion on Penalty of Injury; license sticker must be duly applied in the middle of the flat screen; additional charges and random BSA audits not included)

[feanor]

Re: What's the point?

Yeah, you need to be careful of HP laptops. They've had a lot of problems with fracturing on their BGAs.I know this is generally a problem with BGAs but HP seem to be particularly unreliable. My brother is making a fair bit of money reflowing HP laptops that are barely out of warrenty.

[nohatjim]

Re: What's the point?

Sorry, this product "Q656961" is no longer available.

HP 255 AMD Quad-Core A4-5000 / 15.6 IN / 4GB / 500GB / DVDRW / Windows 8 / Laptop / Notebook PC

HP 255 AMD Quad-Core A4-5000 / 15.6 IN / 4GB / 500GB / DVDRW / Windows 8 / Laptop / Notebook PC

Product Category: Laptops

Misco No.: Q656961

Manufacturer/No: HP / F0X90EA#ABU

[Anonymous Coward]

"you can spend around half"

You'll spend the other half in a year when bits start falling off it.

[John Tserkezis]

Re: "you can spend around half"

"You'll spend the other half in a year when bits start falling off it."

Now, now, it's not that bad. Most of the bits will fail within the extended waranty, and most of those bits may be covered by that waranty.

Kinda like HP, but with less frequent failures.

[Anonymous Coward]

low cost?

$1,199 ? So that's £750. Not in any low cost category I've heard of. Good luck with that

[Tom 38]

Re: low cost?

Did you not see the bit where it has workstation graphics and drivers?

[Roland6]

Re: low cost?

>workstation graphics

That's extra, the $1,119 only include 1,366 x 768 graphics.

But even the best graphics display is obviously still intended for viewing movies rather than doing work on.

[Mikel]

Re: low cost?

$1,199? So that's £1,199. You forgot the transatlantic markup and VAT. In Australia that's AUD7,250.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: low cost?

@Mikel - "$1,199? So that's £1,199. You forgot the transatlantic markup and VAT. In Australia that's AUD7,250."

- and yet, somehow the profits will go to Ireland, and no corporate taxes will be paid.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: low cost?

Good! Otherwise it would be £1,799 (but you would get the "proudly taxed in Yurop" sticker FOR FREE!)

[FreeTard]

Re: low cost?

Isin't everything more expensive in Oz?

The wife was in Sydney for Xmas, and she was getting me to transfer 500AUD every few days - and the accomodation was already paid for! Cost me a bleedin fortune... case in point, Camembert cheese - 15dollars, bread to go with it 3 dollars WTF?

[Levente Szileszky]

Re: low cost?

It is - but 500 bucks every few days, with hotel paid already...?

I don't know that market but as I imagine Chippendale shows are also more expensive at the end of the world... I"m not suggesting anything but y'know, wife, alone, Xmas, other end of the world, you keep sending 500s every few days... funny things can happen, all I'm saying...

[jason 7]

As a lesser mortal...

...may I just ask what anyone does that requires more than 16GB of ram that doesnt involve running 8VMs on a laptop?

Just curious.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: As a lesser mortal...

Anything involving "big data" maybe? Moderatly large databases involving GIS. Stuff like that.

[Lusty]

Re: As a lesser mortal...

databases don't need much memory at all if you do the storage right, and big data certainly doesn't need lots of RAM, that's the whole point of the field!

[xperroni]

Re: As a lesser mortal...

...may I just ask what anyone does that requires more than 16GB of ram that doesnt involve running 8VMs on a laptop?

CAD tools. AutoCAD, Rhynoceros, etc. Damn things eat memory like bacon.

[Robert Sneddon]

Re: As a lesser mortal...

I saw a posting on a blog by someone running server hardware as a workstation with 512GB of RAM installed. He did high-end music composition and kept over 300GB of music and sound samples in RAM to speed things up. I *think* he was running Windows 8 Pro.

[Roland6]

Re: As a lesser mortal...

Probably only people who can't be bothered to install an SSD (or two).

But then MS with Windows doesn't exactly make it easy to do a sensible disk partition and allocation strategy, something that was integral to any Unix system back in the 80's.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: As a lesser mortal...

"But then MS with Windows doesn't exactly make it easy to do a sensible disk partition and allocation strategy, something that was integral to any Unix system back in the 80's."

Your moron box is leaking all over the internet again dear. Windows has had almost identical partitioning to UNIX for many, many years. Often superior in fact, if you care to do a little reading rather than assumption.

[Joel Mansford]

Re: As a lesser mortal...

I develop BI solutions using QlikView which is an in-memory database. I use all 16Gb in my Dell E6430.

I've done various other development where I've run the server stack in a VM on my machine, in corporates it's much easier to run your own 'virtual datacentre' then to involve the IT guys!

Also, a lesser known fact about the Latitude E-series and equivalent precisions is that on the docking station it's possible to run 3 external displays plus the laptop display providing you have the nvidia (discrete) graphics card option.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: As a lesser mortal...

FPGA builds. 20GB is the minimum recommended for running the Stratix V tool chain. Any less and build times rapidly extend into hours. Has meant I have been tied to an internet connection the past couple of years or (shudder) resorting to the client's build environment.

[b 3]

wot?

"starts at $1,199" did someone say "low cost"??

[Joel Mansford]

Re: wot?

Call Dell up and you'll get a better price than that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do these prices include Firefox?

[Anonymous Cowward]

Workstations don't have 16:9 for starters.. 1920 x 1200 or any 16:10 (or 4:3 or even 5:4) resolution is expected.

1920x1080 aka 16:9 is for movie nerds. Let's leave it at that.

[Tim 11]

16GB RAM enough for s/w developers?

Software developers working on enterprise server apps often want need to run the server in a VM.

When you're trying to integrate some J2EE monstrosity with SharePoint bloatware and need to run it all on the laptop, 16GB RAM doesn't cut it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Appreciate the AMD graphics

Recent updates to the open source drivers have much improved both the performance and the power management and open source means it is all nicely integrated into the kernel without the need for binary blobs so it's no extra effort during installation and updates.