Who fancies a six-core, 128GB RAM, 8TB NVMe … laptop? Dell’s started selling a pair of “mobile workstations” with specs that wouldn’t disgrace low-end servers. Both the Precision 7530 and Precision 7730 can run a six-core Xeon E-2176M at 2.70GHz and can ship with up to 64GB of RAM (but can handle 128GB if Dell gets around to shipping 32GB DIMMs for the four-slot beasts). The …
That kind of machine, you're going to want VMWare or similar anyway.
That's a waste to use it for just one OS with those cores and RAM, when you can run everything at the same time.
Linux as the base OS, maybe, but good luck getting all the drivers (especially for the RAID etc.).
I have to admit I do multi boot, as I need to test bare metal behaviour at times, but this really is a minority pursuit.
For well over 90% of purposes, virtualisation with standard or virtualised hardware is fine.
For the parts that need direct unvirtualised hardware, virtualisation with PCI passthrough (VT-d), gets to the next 5%.
Of the last 5% the vast majority will be one operating system on bare metal, the number of people that need multi boot is minimal.
The main reason I multi boot between Windows and various Unixes is because the USB 3 controller doesn't pass through nicely to a VM, and life's been too short to try yet more hacking, and trying later versions of Xen..
linux base, KVM , guests running clustering software.
Test deployment and update/upgrade processes before they go anywhere near a live cluster.
Yeesh. why do I have a 6 year old HP "worktop" --
32G ram , I7, 1Tb spinning rust 500Gb SSD.
I'll take two please, with the Nvidia cards since that means I can play WOW on wine on my laptop.
On these machines, often you don't want anything unneeded between your application and the CPUs/GPUs. Usually OSes don't need many cores and RAM, but some applications may want all the cores and RAM you can throw at them. And some people don't really have many OS and applications to run, they may use only a few if not only one application, albeit a very hungry one.
"Indeed, you could set up a small network of servers in your backpack."
When I was secretary of a local Unix users group, it was often my job to carry the proxy server and all the networking gear to and from the big regular meetings. I'd also be carrying my own desktop system. So that was two medium sized desktop boxen, one WiFi AP, two or three 24 way hubs / switches, a few hundred meters of network cable, one monitor, keyboard, mouse, power cables, and assorted power bricks. In my backpacks (one of those hybrid packs where the day pack can clip to the main pack, and bounce on your tummy as you walk), either walking for two hours, or on the bus.
And people kept wondering why I was always pushing to get the proxy server replaced by something physically smaller.
None of this was battery powered though.
"You clearly haven't used Autocad or any sort of video rendering applications. They will rip through that laptop and make it cry like a small child with a skinned knee."
I've seen AutoCAD running with perfectly acceptable performance on a (laptop) Core i7-powered NUC. I use Visual Studio with large projects on a laptop with a dual-core Core i7, and it's fine, performance-wise. If people use MacBook Pro's for video editing, then these laptops will be fine.
Confused. My Ubuntu server has raid and hasn't been an issue for about 3 years its been running. (Basically a NAS)
And my Dell Ubuntu XPS 13 laptop runs 3 VMwares, windows 7, Kali Linux and I tried an El Capitan VM once. All using the VMWare workstation 12 which is fully supported in Linux. It ran all three at once - because I could.
However my ubuntu laptop was ubuntu because I tried windows 10 and was officially told windows 10 once installed can't dual boot because of UEFI (I was asking for the ubuntu install disk) So probably because of Dell not windows, I had to send back and get a new one.
People stopped dual-booting 20 years ago.
Having to shut down one OS to run another is ridiculous in the modern age, where you can run both simultaneously without issue.
Honestly, we stopped doing that the second virtualisation instructions were put into processors.
I really hope you don't work in IT. Because in 1998 VMWare was still being founded, and Parallels only came on the scene in 2006.
Even in 2018, GPU-related things don't work well in virtualisation (Parallels doesn't support modern OpenGL). And these days, GPUs are no longer just used for gaming.
So no, dual-booting may be defunct in certain areas of IT but even outside gaming, it is required in others.
GPU related things work reasonably well in virtualisation, but you need to use PCI passthrough if the emulated accelerated graphics adaptor isn't good enough.
In order of ease of use ESX passthrough does work, as does KVM (KVM is definitely the most functional solution, slightly harder to set up). Xen also works, but passthrough to NVidia cards needs a Quadro or some unsanctioned patches, AMD cards work with caveats usually as a secondary card to the emulated primary.
When passthrough does work, it works well, and fast.
Downvoting you because I've ran into at least 3 specific cases where the thing needed to be ran on bare metal install before it would thingy its thing how we needed it to thing. Plus lots of things we thingy are now behaving differently if they are ran in a vm and we need native thingyness to test what we need to test properly.
I have some hypervisor boxes that run instances too, they have their places in our armoury.
You might not need to dual boot to start word up occasionally or save a few quid on servers, but please, don't try to tag the entire world with your use case with some smug but ultimately technically clueless attitude.
"People stopped dual-booting 20 years ago."
You are almost correct. My test box has 20 partitions, with 20 different bootable OSes on it (plus or minus, it varies sometimes). So to be pedantic, that's not "dual-boot". Among other things, I do virtual world and VR development on it, where direct access to the 3D hardware helps a lot. That's actually the reason I bought it, I tried to get Oculus Rift DK2 to run on a VM, wasn't gonna happen, needed a new computer for that dev job. Since then, it's my general purpose test box that I do crazy shit on.
"People stopped dual-booting 20 years ago."
Not true. More like 7 years ago for my home rig, the problem being the cost and RAM limitations of consumer grade gear.
For example bumping my 2010 PC from the supplied 2GB RAM to 4GB cost USD 50, but 8GB was going to cost USD 200. Yes, I did manage to run a few VMs within 4GB but it was a tight fit for the stuff I was trying to do.
Roll on to 2014 and things got a lot better. I was able to stuff 16GB into 3 systems which only officially supported 8GB and affordably too.
Being able to load up a minimal OS and app suite if one were, say, forced to power up your computer at a security checkpoint, such as one of your fine International Entry Points. Or maybe getting the hardware repaired by a local tech services company, and you don't want to give them root access to your system, or let them go through your personal data.
Also, you can use it to totally isolate environments (although VMs these days are pretty good at doing that, too).
"People stopped dual-booting 20 years ago."
Nope. Started doing that again after Oculus decided that "the new software required Windows 10 for the best experience". Weird thing is I specifically bought the rift because it had Win 7 support.
"Having to shut down one OS to run another is ridiculous in the modern age, where you can run both simultaneously without issue."
If you don't do any serious stuff.
As you can't virtualize your graphics card with the consumer-grade virtualization options. VMware is useless for a VR-HMD or any other serious game. Then we haven't talked about video-encoding/converting which uses the GPU for rendering these days.
"Honestly, we stopped doing that the second virtualisation instructions were put into processors."
You mean YOU stopped doing that. I have no other choice. Since the virtualization options that could do full hardware virtualization (including gfx-card) are too expensive or too complicated for an average user like me.
SO, Nope. I'm again starting to multi-boot. Not by choice, though.
Oculus CV1 is one of the reasons my main system is multi boot, but it can be made to work in a VM.
For the home user the easiest option is definitely KVM, as it has some settable flags to prevent consumer NVidia cards from disabling their passthrough ability. AMD works too but isn't always as good at surviving multiple VM reboots. This generally (but not necessarily) also requires multiple graphics cards so the host OS has something to display on. Xen/ESX work too but have more caveats. KVM may also now have the ability to blit the output of the passthrough card to the desktop - I know someone was working on it.
The issue I found was on Xen with USB passthrough. Virtualised USB is horrid in KVM, somewhat better in Xen, but VR really/ideally needs a discrete USB card with multiple host controllers on it (each USB3 port providing 5Gb/s, usually this is shared) passed through directly. The card I found works fine in FreeBSD VMs, but not in a Windows VM on passthrough with an earlier version of Xen, and I've not had the time/priority to fix it.
Nevertheless, there are configurations out there that do work.
'Nope. Started doing that again after Oculus decided that "the new software required Windows 10 for the best experience". Weird thing is I specifically bought the rift because it had Win 7 support.'
Oculus used to support Linux and Mac, but dropped them before release of the CV1. They said at the time support might come back, but I could see the writing on the wall. I could also see them dropping support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 in the future. These are major parts of the reasons I cancelled my CV1 pre-order shortly before release. I'll stick with my DK2, and not update the drivers. Only used for development anyway, and I finished that job long ago. Google Daydream, while only 3DoF, is much more fun, I use that all the time.
To be honest I only tried it to have a look and after a couple of months I just couldn't find a use for it in my normal routine.
I had the ubuntu laptop and the VM of windows was for a few steam games when away from my main rig in a hotel.
I did like it but just never used it. My next laptop may well be that direction however.
However my ubuntu laptop was ubuntu because I tried windows 10 and was officially told windows 10 once installed can't dual boot because of UEFI (I was asking for the ubuntu install disk) So probably because of Dell not windows
Perhaps Dell didn't something nasty to impose that limitation. I bought a refurb HP Pavilion 500-314 that came with Windows 8 pre-installed, which I then upgraded to 10. This is a UEFI system. I then installed Ubuntu in its own partitions. Without any work from me, Ubuntu made itself the bootloader, and added Windows as a boot option.
I wouldn't be shocked if Dell tried to prevent that, but you probably would have been successful if you tried.
What is really need is an abstract virtual OS that runs on BOTH Linux and core Windows (not the messaging bit/UI), then the question about 'which is best' becomes moot.
There is no doubt that an OS that is based on FrameStreams rather than Streams (in which size of frame is a valid operator) and means that the OS then more clearly represents the base hardware, with interrupts, disk sectors, HTTP packets. etc.
But I am but dreaming it seems...
You clearly want us to know your expertise in this field so why don't you build this wonderful OS... the collaborative nature of the internet means that you needn't sit around saying " i could have built a better OS than that"... you can actually do it.............. or just talk about it on forums and to board people in the pub.
Beat Ya'll To It!
Our Midgrid Code is quite literally some of the most high-performance graphics-oriented secured operating system code ever created! It makes Linux looks like a toy! NO LIMITS WHATSOEVER!
It's fully future-proofed FROM THE GROUND UP for 128-bit, 256-bit, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16k, 32k, 64k and 128k-bit memory addresses, signed and unsigned integers, fixed point numbers, floating point numbers and unlimited length BCD's (Binary Coded Decimals). It is FULLY encrypted with multiple algorithms with SHOR'S resistant anti-quantum computing too! All variables, constants, memory addresses, fields, records, objects, files, folders, audio/video/data stream imagery, etc. are ALWAYS ENCRYPTED with separate error code storage AND always change location in memory on a truly random basis (i.e. NO USE of pseudo-random number generators -- use truly non-linear random natural phenomena as RNG). All reads and writes to and from EVERY memory location, variable and array is encrypted/decrypted with pre-defined and user-defined AES-768 (Triple AES-256), Two-Fish and a Custom Lattice-based anti-quantum computing system algoithms (SHOR's resistant!)
To output for a specific CPU/GPU architecture, I only need to change TEN constants at the beginning of the code to make it work on ARM 32/64, AMD/Intel 16/32/64/128, Super/UltraSPARC, IBM Power 5/6/7/8/9/10, etc. It's hard-threaded, real-time oriented (4 milliseconds AND LOWER latency on our own CPU's!) and can share memory GLOBALLY OVER A NETWORK and auto-grid CPU and GPU tasks within a virtual supercomputer system we designed using our own custom IP-packet infrastructure which we created from SCRATCH for secured and ALWAYS encrypted DNS, HTTPS, RTP/UDP packets with priority-levels and anti-man-in-the-middle authorization and digital signaturing.
I can process 64-bit RGBA pixels at 3D-XYZ (Width, Height and Depth) images with individual tiles as large as 65536 pixels by 65536 pixels by 65536 pixels and overall total pixel counts up to 2^128 by 2^128 by 2^128 pixels and can go up to (2^128,000+ ) x ^3rd power pixels as CPU's/GPU's get bigger word widths. Right now we are at 128-bits wide for all numeric operations but can change to another at a mere edit of 10 constant values.
AND it was ALL written in OBJECT PASCAL using our custom cross-compiler technology.
ONLY the lowest level routines have machine code. All else is general purpose Object Pascal!
We built it to run on our custom CPU's which are GaAs opto-electronic in nature and have 128-bit word widths and run at a rather high clock speed.
It took us 12 years to finish BUT we did it! It works GREAT !!!!
I Am currently typing on a 7720 dell precision and compared to the M4500 it replaced it has been $%*& I have had 2 motherboards and 1 dimm fail on me in about 18 months, and this is pretty consistent with what the rest of my team's experiences!.
Compare that to the M4500 I used to use which never had a hardware fault and I am fairly confident that you could drive a tank over and be fine, it is a total turd!
Not holding much hope out though as it just looks like a refresh rather than a redesign.
and this is pretty consistent with what the rest of my team's experiences!.
Are you in a team of bodybuilders? We used to refer to these model lines as the "Texan Brick" or "Schwarzeneger's laptop". While the specs have always been on the impressive side, the weight...
Are you in a team of bodybuilders?
Company policy is everybody gets laptops for DR reasons so we don't have to lug em around much, they also issue us all with rucksacs so the weight is not too obnoxious for short runs.
This policy did pay off when the "Beast from the east" visited as it was pretty much business as usual with only a skeleton staff who lived close actually in the office and everyone else running over VPN / Skype, HR congratulated everyone on the better than 90% attendance during the mess.
"...Company policy is everybody gets laptops for DR reasons so we don't have to lug em around much, they also issue us all with rucksacs so the weight is not too obnoxious for short runs..."
I get the whole "Laptop for DR" idea, but what drove them to supply you with a mobile server??? :)
I get the whole "Laptop for DR" idea, but what drove them to supply you with a mobile server??? :)
Not really mobile but the server images a mirrored off sight every night.
We do a DR test every year where the entire company has to work from home and our supplier has to spin up the images in their data centre, last time it took them about 3 hours to go from cold start to having the bulk of the users logged in and working.
As for the laptop, the main driver for the beasty was the multi-monitor support, the loadout for the devs here are 3 19" panels on a monitor arm + the laptop, Expensive on CAP-EX but it doesn't take much of an increase in throughput to justify it on an OP-EX basis.
"..As for the laptop, the main driver for the beasty was the multi-monitor support, the loadout for the devs here are 3 19" panels on a monitor arm + the laptop, Expensive on CAP-EX but it doesn't take much of an increase in throughput to justify it on an OP-EX basis..."
Ta for that.
I have a custom job at home - A PC Specialist 15.6" Defiance II (they're onto the V now).
The main driver behind the purchase was the ability to have 4 x SSD/HDD (2xm.2 and 2xSATA).
But it turns out to have HDMI and two mini DP ports. I was running the internal display + 2 external from it very comfortably.
One thing I actually miss is Citrix XenClient - a bare metal Hypervisor for desktops/laptops. The ability to boot my virtualised corp image, my own gaming image (XC could do GPU passthrough to one of the VM's) and my CentOS and switched between them with a keypress was brilliant.
I'm currently typing this on a Dell Precision 7510. I've ben using it for over two years and have suffered no hardware faults.
There have been a few minor software issues, and the pre-installed Ubuntu failed to get past the initial "Select your country" screen and wouldn't boot after that, but a fresh Ubuntu 16.04 on a USB stick fixed that.
I wouldn't mind the updated version, if not just for the reduction in weight.
Compared to the first mobile computer that I used - 2 boxes - one with a PDP 11/73 and another with a VT220 terminal!! Both were in heavy duty flight cases. The combined weight was over 50 pounds!!
(For the curious - 1 MIP, 512KB RAM, 80MB disk storage and an 80x24 text display !!)
Damn that beast could have flown you to the moon!
Dell’s started selling a pair of “mobile workstations” with specs that wouldn’t disgrace low-end servers.
My home desktop runs rings around my (now coming to the end of it's supported lifespan) server at work and this is pretty normal, home gaming machines always tend to be more powerful than lower end servers.
However, in the majority of server applications the essence of a server is not, and has never been about pure performance. It's always been about redundancy, reliability and business contuinity. It's rare to find a home computer with redundant PSU's and HDD's, whereas this is pretty obligatary on servers.
'You're falling behind the times.
'The correct question now is "Will it run Fortnite".'
Ah the trends are changing so quickly these days, I figure it'll only take a fortnight for this new one to become ancient history.
I'd get my coat, but fashions change so quickly... um it's hoodies this year?
Funnily enough, my current 'gaming' laptop, which mostly gets used for coding and compiling, has its heat vent on the right. Fortunately it's towards the back and angled to the rear so it's not normally an issue, but it's definitely something to be aware of when you're putting the GPU under heavy load because the exhaust air gets pretty toasty.
You know unless you move around for work instead of being a 9-5 permie. Lots of contractors prefer to use their own machines when on site, consultants or sales-people might want a way to demo an entire system on the move, etc.
A client of mine spent a couple of grand a few years ago doing just that, they needed a workstations-server "system in a box"
I'd buy one, on two caveats, first that those synaptics buttons are hardware buttons, not emulated in the driver software. I still buy thinkpad's for that reason.
Secondly, I want you to buy one and throw it about first and see if its rugged enough for mobile usage. My one and only foray into big shiny luggable laptops was a asus, and 4 flights in it lost a third of its screen and the local asus dealer wouldn't honour its guarantee after I told him it happened on a flight in hold luggage (stupid attack of honesty), the way another repair guy explained it to me was they'd made the screen wider by adding a extra panel to the right on the standard one and joined it with fine wires. I still have it, it still only shows 2/3 of the screen but its regulated to doing vehicle stuff now, and we fit all the display mode on the working bit :-)
Sod it, I'll just buy another stinkpad for now. I can always fend off muggers with a blow from that in a emergency.
I just received two P7530s from Dell. We are going to use them to run SolidWorks. It is important to properly configure these machines for the best bang for the bucks. I was able to configure them for right around 3 grand and I will like to see how they work out.
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....and therefore, er, apples to apples comparisons are unlikely, but when you start ragging on the differences between this massive monster and Apple's last year products, you could at least point out that Apple estimates the maximum battery charge lifetime, while for these machines.... or that the display even on 17 inch Dell laptops is hardly comparable to a Retina-like display. 1920 x 1080 does not cut it if you're doing graphics work these days, but I doubt that's the target audience for these machines.
I've been running a 5510 model with Xeon, 32 GB and SSD for the past 2+ years and it is a beast.
My work entails building virtual PoCs comprised of multiple servers, routing, firewalls, IPS etc. and so far, this thing was able to handle everything I throw at it.
Battery life could've been better, but it is hard to expect the system used in this fashion to last long when unplugged.
Running Win10 Pro, VMware Workstation with nested ESXi(s).
I suspect that the 7 series is the improved version and will likely be the one I'll upgrade to, if my current one gives up the ghost.
The only issues of note are absence of the fingerprint reader and the smardcard slot.
The 15" screen is a 4k, but I had to dial it down to 1080p, since some of the apps were not scaling properly and I did not have a microscope handy.
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