What's your dream notebook for ArcGIS Pro?

[TimMinter1]

Howdy.  Unfortunately, I'm in the position of replacing a prematurely failed 2011 MacBook Pro 15".  I've been trying to select a replacement notebook that would be able to run ArcGIS Pro (SysReqs), but nothing has leapt off the web and said, "I'm the one.  Buy me."

So, for you Esri ArcGIS Pro team members and early adopters who have had some good experience with the beta and pre-release app, what notebook would you pick if you wanted ArcGIS Pro to run about as well as it possibly could on a notebook?  Thanks!

Message was edited by: Tim Minter - added "arcgis pro" to the tags.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Question...how does your portability requirement weigh against your design useage?  In short...is machine portability a need or a nice? It removed the laptop vs desktop option only on one level.

[TimMinter1]

I have a boolean weighting:

• notebook = 1
• desktop = 0

[ElliottRobinson]

lol on your boolean weighting...

you asked, here it is:

Dell Precision M6800 Mobile Workstation

Processor	Intel® Core™ i7-4810MQ Processor (Quad Core 2.80GHz, 3.80GHz Turbo, 6MB 47W, w/HD Graphics 4600)
Operating System	Windows 7 Professional English 64bit (Includes Windows 8.1 Pro license)
Display	17.3" UltraSharp™ FHD(1920x1080) Wide View Anti-Glare LED-backlit
Memory	16GB DDR3L at 1600MHz
Hard Drive	1TB Hybrid 2.5in, SATA3 with 8GB SSD Flash
Optical Drive	8X DVD+/-RW Drive Slot Load
Graphics Card	Nvidia® Quadro® K3100M w/4GB GDDR5

Price is a 1 on the boolean expensive/not expensive scale

[TimMinter1]

Thanks Elliott.  Good candidate.  From a bit of "research" (e.g. believing likely content I read on the web), it looks like the discrete graphics card may need to be marketed toward AutoCAD, 3D design, etc., rather than gaming purposes.  Your K3100M above leads me in a useful direction.  Also, from previous poking about in Intel's ARK, it looks like I'm limited to 4 cores / 8 threads for now.  Finally, I find the 17" class of notebooks/laptops to be just too huge for my preference, so I'll size down in the Precision Mobile Workstation family for candidates.

[ElliottRobinson]

I used to have a Precision laptop and used it purely for GIS. It was a workhorse and could churn out the toughest calculations and manipulate huge satellite images comfortably. I highly recommend it for GIS.

I understand the 17" dilemma, but I just bought a giant backpack to cart it around. One day I'll replace my old one, but for now I mostly work on the Precision desktop. I sometimes do GIS on my HP laptop, which incidentally cannot handle much of a challenge.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

hmmmm  Fuzzy membership might be a useful approach to weigh your options and you could incorporate Elliott's criteria in a similar fashion

[CattyannCampbell]

Anything in the Dell Precision Line is your best bet. I hear you on the 17" its just heavy and the laptop bags for it are expensive. The M6800 15" model should work nice for you beef up the RAM and dedicated video card and you have  desktop replacement.