Hi Matt, for people in the US, there´s pretty good refurbished hardware available from Apple, Dell, HP and possibly a bunch more:
HP http://www.hp.com/sbso/buspurchase_refurbished_specials.html? Dell (laptop link but there´s more if you search for refurbished on the site) http://www.dell.com/us/dfb/p/precision-laptops Apple http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac I would think that the above and the likes give a good balance between guaranteed performance and pricing for a dedicated home use and may allow to access features otherwise too expensive to justify for a personal machine. Personally, I wouldn´t expect a laptop to last longer than 2 years for it´s primary use but can imagine there´s enough options to pick from for a solid, mobile experience and a pricetag that´s justifiable accordingly. It shouldn´t hurt too much if it´s stolen or broken suddenly, imo. Cheers, tim On 12.01.2013 04:15, Matt Lind wrote:
…What computer should I get? (for home). I have always used workstations and have already done the research for another purchase. However, it’s been nearly 8 years since my last investment and my trusty Dell Precision workstation is starting to fail L. I am considering going mobile this time. I’m asking for people’s experience with laptops as I have never used a laptop for 3D work before and have mostly heard bad things in the area of reliability and lack of selection. I don’t need top of the line, but I am interested in something durable that won’t break the bank and performs at least as well as a mid-grade workstation. Besides 3D, I’ll be doing a lot of coding, photography (editing), and some video with my DSLR. So color accuracy and IO would be important features. I would tend to think an SSD hard drive, multi-core CPU (4+), USB 3.0, a decent Nvidia Quadro card would be a good baseline. Anything else people recommend in a laptop? Or to avoid? Please reply offline. Thanks, Matt
