[Qgis-user] minimum and recommended specs for a laptop?

[Nicolas Cadieux]

Hi,

My experience is that over heating laptops is often caused by dust in old fans.  Fans can be changed or cleaned but it does take some skills to do that.  A shop can do it for 50-100$.  The second problem is that companies use cheap parts.  

I would go the computer that has a cpu made with the finest lithography (14mn) but even that will not help with a cheap computer.  I did not look at the HQ options you are referring to. Go to Intel and the the exact spect for the cpu serial number.  Look at lithography, cache, onboard video card ...

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i7-processors.html

Gaming laptops may help as they are generally made with more rugged parts.  You may also look at professional laptop built for CAD.  They will generally come with pro video cards that may not be very helpful but the rest of the computer should be better built.  I am usually happy with a pro level Lenovo laptop. (Not found in a store).  They last long, are more expensive but generally come with a limited intel video card.  That is the trade off.

My recommendations is that you should always consider the maximum memory you can put in the laptop as that is the only upgrade you can do appart from the HD.  Make sure you can change the HD (not an option with most resent MACs). Buy and SSD if you can.  That is probably the most important option (along with memory) you can select that will speed up large datasets.

Nicolas



> Le 19 juill. 2018 à 05:32, Steven Drake <drake.steven at gmail.com> a écrit :
> 
> Hello, 
> 
> I'm thinking of buying a laptop and wondering about the minimum and recommended specs for a laptop to run QGIS 3.x? The plan is to use Ubuntu as the OS and the laptop for writing scripts, working on Process Models, etc... with occasional full blown tests using 'large' (+500,000 polygon) shapefiles. My desktop is more than sufficient for this but I'm looking for something to use when travelling. 
> 
> I used to have a somewhat decent laptop but it is older and gets crazy hot... and does not do well with larger shapefiles. The old laptop case actually deformed slightly in the hot areas which screams to me "fire hazard!" and therefore is no longer used. I'd like to avoid those issues with the new laptop.
> 
> The laptops on the market seem to be mainly 7th generation Intel processors with a wide variation in performance. Just to keep this simple, let's consider i7 types. There are designations ending with a "U" which use less power, create less heat and used in lower performing computers. Then there are the "H" and "HQ" processors in higher end computers which sound more capable and use more power. 
> 
> I'm guessing a "U" processor will be overtaxed by the scenario in the first paragraph. So *if* it does not crash it will run to the design limit and heat up. If using the "H" or "HQ" processors it will likely not crash, produce lots of heat but maybe not too much since it is designed for such intensive applications? 
> 
> Am I understanding the situation correctly? What else might play a significant role in the heat issue? What about laptops with built in cooling systems beyond the normal fans and heat sinks? And most importantly... how to pick a computer / processor / other items capable of running QGIS with large datasets? How to find a reasonable middle between performance and heat? ...and of course not cost too much? Gaming computers????
> 
> Thank you, 
> 
> --S
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-user mailing list
> Qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
> List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-user/attachments/20180719/184544e8/attachment.html>