Business laptop advice - which thinkpad for £1500?

[Lefty]

I’ve had a Lenovo think pad for 8 years and it’s been great but is getting on a bit now and won’t support windows 11.

Tine for an upgrade. Happy to stay with a thinkpad but the range is rather confusing.

Don’t need a big screen, doesn’t need to be thin and light. I’d rather focus on performance and reliability/longevity.

I work with very large complex spreadsheet models and do a lot of Monte Carlo simulation, again on large complex models.

Any advice on AMD vs Intel? My impression is that RAM is more important than processor speed for MCS but I might be wrong.

Budget fairly open, around £1500 would be fine. I’d really like it to last another 8 years if possible!

Something like this?

https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/configurator/cto/inde...

[Lefty]

I asked chatgpt, it reckons I should go for an Intel HX processor and 64gb of RAM…all sounds good but is more like £2k which I don’t really mind if it makes it more likely the machine will last longer

[captain_cynic]

AMD processors are currently better than Intel's offerings, however we're talking about a laptop so AMD have two drawbacks. They require more power so less battery life and as a result, run hotter so your laptop will be warmer.

If that's an issue an Intel might be better. If not, either will be fine.

However any Ryzen 7 or I7 will do the job just fine. As you've said Excel, what you want is RAM, lots and lots of it. 32 GB is not excessive for your use in the slightest and you want a fast SSD (disk, storage) as well.

[Lefty]

Cheers, yeah I’m not too worried about battery life or heat either, I’ll only rarely be using it away from my office and when I do it’ll just be doing PowerPoint - the big hairy calcs will be done back at base, plugged in and with a couple of monitors so I don’t even care about a large screen or brightness of it.

[Lefty]

This was ChatGPT’s take on it

[Mr Pointy]

Just to be "that guy" if your laptop only needs to be portable to do powerpoint presentations how about spending your money on a desktop where you aren't buying something with a screen you don't need 95% of the time.

[Lefty]

This is a very good point!!

[skyebear]

Regardless of form factor, something with a decent GPU would be ideal for your use.

[wyson]

What the OP linked is more than good enough for a bit of powerpoint.

Would get a P series mobile workstation chunky boi for your desktop bound stuff, but you said no need for the laptop to perform those tasks.

I’m presuming by spreadsheet, you mean Excel? In which case, there is no need to Witness in this thread.

Edited by wyson on Friday 4th July 14:09

[the-photographer]

How about this?

Intel Ultra 7 165H (six performance cores)
NVIDIA RTX 1000 Ada 6GB GDDR6 Dedicated Graphics
16" IPS, Full HD+, 500 nits Display

Only 32Gb, so check you can upgrade it

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/335512133863?

Or

Lenovo Thinkpad P1 Gen 7
Intel ultra 7 155H
64gb ram
NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/146676281026

[xeny]

Does the software you're using for Monte Carlo support GPU acceleration, because if not, I"m unclear as to the benefit.

[Lefty]

Good question. It’s Palisade @risk so runs as an add on to excel. I think excel does most of the heavy lifting. I think Excel can use GPU for some stuff but not actual calculations.

[xeny]

Run a simulation in Excel and look at the GPU use view in Task Manager?

[osterbo]

For work, I've got the P14s Gen 5 (intel) with core ultra 7 155H, 64GB RAM, and the Intel ARC graphics. It's blazingly fast. It feels very very solid. The keyboard is pretty nice. The battery lasts well.

It has big fans on the underside, and when they spool up it's noticeable, but not a huge deal.

It is, however, not the lightest laptop to carry around. But I WFH, so most of the time, it lives on the desk and I'm not amazingly bothered. If I was in the office carrying it to multiple meetings a day, I wouldn't have it - probably I'd choose an X1 carbon.

I reckon the P14s is a nice, reasonably portable, performance sweet spot if you're not going to splash on a P1.

[Captain_Morgan]

Who’s funding the upgrade?

Is it tax deductible?

Can the current laptop manage the presentations etc ?

If the computations will be assisted by a gpu then look at a desktop solution.

[Lefty]

Captain_Morgan said:

Who s funding the upgrade?

Is it tax deductible?

Can the current laptop manage the presentations etc ?

If the computations will be assisted by a gpu then look at a desktop solution.

Yes I’ll buy it through my Ltd company so anything I spend is a legitimate business expense and I’ll get vat back as well as Corp tax relief.

Yeah the current machine can probably slog on with PowerPoint, it’s not compatible with Windows 11 apparently though.

I quite like the idea of a small cheap laptop for the odd visit to client offices and a powerful workstation for doing the grunt work. Two computers to look after instead of one though

[Lefty]

osterbo said:

For work, I've got the P14s Gen 5 (intel) with core ultra 7 155H, 64GB RAM, and the Intel ARC graphics. It's blazingly fast. It feels very very solid. The keyboard is pretty nice. The battery lasts well.

It has big fans on the underside, and when they spool up it's noticeable, but not a huge deal.

It is, however, not the lightest laptop to carry around. But I WFH, so most of the time, it lives on the desk and I'm not amazingly bothered. If I was in the office carrying it to multiple meetings a day, I wouldn't have it - probably I'd choose an X1 carbon.

I reckon the P14s is a nice, reasonably portable, performance sweet spot if you're not going to splash on a P1.

Cheers, I was looking at higher end p14s or lower end p1’s. The budget is pretty flexible, I would rather buy something good and reliable that is going to last, I’m not the guy who upgrades every year or two and am really not up to speed with computer tech (and haven’t been since being a nerdy teen in the 90’s!)

[the-photographer]

Lefty said:

Yes I ll buy it through my Ltd company so anything I spend is a legitimate business expense and I ll get vat back as well as Corp tax relief.

Yeah the current machine can probably slog on with PowerPoint, it s not compatible with Windows 11 apparently though.

I quite like the idea of a small cheap laptop for the odd visit to client offices and a powerful workstation for doing the grunt work. Two computers to look after instead of one though

Loads of x390's on ebay for around £200

[Lefty]

Yeah cheers that looks ideal - if I go down the route of two machines.

Thanks all for your help