New Laptop

[sawyer65]

IT has given a choice between these 2:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/del...top/spd/latitude-15-5540-laptop/s107l5540usvp


https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/lapt...thinkpad-t16-gen-2-(16-inch-intel)/21hh003yus


Mostly dealing with Mitsubishi, LS with a little Allen Bradley and Siemens, both PLC and HMI.

Anyone have a preference between these 2 or see any pitfalls with either?

 

[Ken Moore]

If you are using virtual machines, I think you want something more powerful than an I5 processor.

 

[JesperMP]

My laptop has an Intel XEON, 32 GB RAM, ..
Even then, running applications in VMs run noticeably slower than natively.
I would go for an i9, and I would stick to Windows 10 for now.

 

[robertmee]

I would tell IT to shove it. You aren't doing Word and Excel. If you're running multiple VMs to manage different software development environments (I wouldn't be mixing Rockwell with Siemens), you need more horsepower. I prefer Dell over Lenovo but they are both suitable manufacturers. But those spec's are woefully inadequate. I develop on 64GB and an I7 and I'm already looking to run something faster. For development, I would want at a minimum:

I9 at 5Ghz
64GB memory
1TB primary SSD Drive
1TB Secondary storage spinner (Unless you don't travel and have a local storage device/backup in place)

 

[L33er]

My IT is more diligent than your IT. He normally gives 3 choices.

This is what I would let him know about this choice:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/gam...pd/alienware-m18-r1-laptop/useahctom18r1rpl01

 

[robertmee]

My IT is more diligent than your IT. He normally gives 3 choices.

This is what I would let him know about this choice:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/gam...pd/alienware-m18-r1-laptop/useahctom18r1rpl01

Nice spec's. I would probably bump it to 64GB memory, but otherwise, a solid laptop.

 

[exabmorgan]

I guess I'd like to know one of the factors behind the multiple recommendations to go i9 with crapton of memory. Is this because those recommendations are depending on a hypervisor of poor quality?


Like ornery virtualbox? The one that still has the worst USB passthrough I've had the experience of running across.


My IT hasn't gotten around to updating my 7th gen i5 with 16gb and I lived with VMWare for a long time with few complaints. (maybe two heavy guests at a time and one other in the background)


When I got tired of the vmware license treadmill I switched to KVM+QEMU and that breathed a new life into this older hardware. Currently I've got three heavy guests and some others and nothing is particularly slow.
-I think a NVM/SSD is a requirement and a discreet GPU are good ideas but i9 + mega memory is going to make that laptop a brick of a portable.

 

[L33er]

So you got tired of waiting and waiting .. now switched to a Linux based QEMU. But the fact of the matter is VMware is still #1 as seen here:
https://www.techradar.com/best/best-virtual-machine-software

 

[dwoodlock]

Your choices seem a little weak compared to what's currently available. Your IT guy should understand that you're a power user.

I have a precision 7760 that I've been using the past year, and it does fine.W11, 32gb ram, I7vpro. I run a few different w11 vm's for AB,Schneider,Beckhoff and they all work fine.

p.s. as mentioned above the usb passthrough with virtualbox is garbage, but having to pay for licensing renewals is also garbage imho.

 

[robertmee]

I guess I'd like to know one of the factors behind the multiple recommendations to go i9 with crapton of memory. Is this because those recommendations are depending on a hypervisor of poor quality?


Like ornery virtualbox? The one that still has the worst USB passthrough I've had the experience of running across.


My IT hasn't gotten around to updating my 7th gen i5 with 16gb and I lived with VMWare for a long time with few complaints. (maybe two heavy guests at a time and one other in the background)


When I got tired of the vmware license treadmill I switched to KVM+QEMU and that breathed a new life into this older hardware. Currently I've got three heavy guests and some others and nothing is particularly slow.
-I think a NVM/SSD is a requirement and a discreet GPU are good ideas but i9 + mega memory is going to make that laptop a brick of a portable.

In a conversion project, let's say PLC5/Wonderware to CLX/Ignition, I'm concurrently running 4 VMS....An XP instance for the older PLC5, a Win7 for WW, a Win 10 for Ignition and a Win 10 for Studio. Then on the host, I may have autocad, pdf, etc open for drawings. Running 3 monitors. Add to that Outlook, Quickbooks, a few chrome instances, etc., the 64Gb memory is a must for me.

 

[dwoodlock]

I guess I'd like to know one of the factors behind the multiple recommendations to go i9 with crapton of memory. Is this because those recommendations are depending on a hypervisor of poor quality?

My IT hasn't gotten around to updating my 7th gen i5 with 16gb

Thats why in my mind anyway you might as well go with the Ferrari of the time, because you'll probably be waiting some years before you have the opportunity to upgrade again.

 

[joseph_e2]

For about 3 years, I've been running an HP with 2.6GHz i7 and 32GB of RAM. I have a 2TB SSD internal for storing my VMs. It runs 2 VMs with no issue and 3 working a little. I also have Inventor and BricsCAD on the host along with the normal Office software and IT stuff running. It gets to be a lot sometimes and I wonder about upgrading the RAM now too, but it's not a high priority right now.


I think you should "insist" on as much RAM as you can get and a fast internal solid state drive for storage of VMs. And a good CPU. This software can be pretty intense and your PC needs the oomph to handle it.

 

[tdoa]

A current i7 P has 12 cores, an i9 will be just a battery burning furnace..

Windows 11 and its forced Hyper-V **** is also, well, ****, thats why I have a boot option with hyper-V totally off, the difference in VM performance is massive, we are talking between TIA V17 taking 5 minutes to open vs less than 30 seconds.. That and turning off the side channel mitigation in the VMWare settings menu.

I had an old i7-7700HQ with 32GB of RAM, now I have a Thinkpad P16s with a i7-1360P, and before I nuked the Hyper-V my much older laptop was much faster, now I can easily run 3-4 VMs in parallel, plus I have 4h of battery time, no need to go for a 100W plus i9..

I'm also using VMWare Workstation, virtualbox is much slower..

 

[theColonel26]

Yeah you need to tell IT, you will order what you need and they can just accept it. They have no concept of what you need.

I just ordered a Lenovo P16 Gen 2 with a i7-13850Hx (8 cores plus 12 E-Cores) with 8GB of ram. Then I just ordered 4x48GB (192GB) of DDR5, and I am going to swap it out when it get here. If you run any VMs you want atleast 64GB of RAM these days. You aren't going to do anything much with 16GBs, it's a joke.

You want the Fastest NVMe SSD you can get, and a minimum of 1TB. I have 2x 2TB NVMe PCI-E V3 drives that I am moving over from my last laptop. Which was a P15 Gen 1, with a i7 and 128GB of RAM.

Upgrading RAM and drives yourself is by far the cheapest way to go.

As far as VM performance you generally want to turn of 3D-Hardware acceleration. especially for Studio 5000.

Also Keep in mind that E-Cores are currently terrible for VMs, so you need to lock your VMs in to only use P-Cores. This can be done in the config files in VMware.

You current i5 only has 4 P-Cores....

 

[Lare]

1920x1080 and 15,6" for TIA portal. You need to open and close different editor boxes all time or you only see little piece of ladder.

Of course you can take normal separate flat screen to commisioning.