New laptop or Virtual desktop?
Discussion
I'm looking for a laptop to replace my now dead 2014 Mac Book Pro. It was a great laptop, did everything I needed. Essentially it has enough grunt to run Lightroom / Photoshop and do some lightweight video editing.
Looking at laptops today. Mac Book Pros are out of reach cost wise. The world of PC laptops is so confusing it just puts me off. I like the look for the Asus Zenbook Book Pro, but it's not available anywhere. A friend of mine suggests an Asus gaming machine he uses for video work, but the battery life is woeful.
A friend of mine has suggested that I look at Virtual Desktops, running GPU intensive applications on AWS or Azure is now an option
My worry is about the location of the media, I have very fast download, but not not upload (thanks Virgin).
The budget for a laptop is around £1200 with room for wiggle and a bit of man maths.
I'm open to ideas. If you are going to suggest a laptop, I'd expect latest gen i7, decent SSD and ideally a 2nd HDD. Decent battery life and portability would be considered a big plus.
Or a decent screen and something that can run a virtual desktop (once I've learnt about them...)
Looking at laptops today. Mac Book Pros are out of reach cost wise. The world of PC laptops is so confusing it just puts me off. I like the look for the Asus Zenbook Book Pro, but it's not available anywhere. A friend of mine suggests an Asus gaming machine he uses for video work, but the battery life is woeful.
A friend of mine has suggested that I look at Virtual Desktops, running GPU intensive applications on AWS or Azure is now an option
My worry is about the location of the media, I have very fast download, but not not upload (thanks Virgin).
The budget for a laptop is around £1200 with room for wiggle and a bit of man maths.
I'm open to ideas. If you are going to suggest a laptop, I'd expect latest gen i7, decent SSD and ideally a 2nd HDD. Decent battery life and portability would be considered a big plus.
Or a decent screen and something that can run a virtual desktop (once I've learnt about them...)
Amazon pricing for Workspaces (which is their DaaS offering) is here: https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/pricing/
The graphics Workspace is only offered in the pay by hour charging model which has a monthly "ground rent" of $22 with a $1.75 per hour cost. Assuming you're based in the UK though; Ireland will be the best location which is a small amount more.
Even Amazon accept the graphics workspace is an expensive proposition; it's aimed at point/tactical usage as opposed to being a long term replacement for an existing productivity device (for example we use them for very short term scientific data visualization - they're built, task(s) executed, and then thrown away frequently within a 24 hour period). In short you'll likely save money by buying the real (physical) thing especially if your use case is mixed e.g. you need the horse power for some graphics but you also surf the net, watch TV etc and therefore your monthly use time will be high.
The graphics Workspace is only offered in the pay by hour charging model which has a monthly "ground rent" of $22 with a $1.75 per hour cost. Assuming you're based in the UK though; Ireland will be the best location which is a small amount more.
Even Amazon accept the graphics workspace is an expensive proposition; it's aimed at point/tactical usage as opposed to being a long term replacement for an existing productivity device (for example we use them for very short term scientific data visualization - they're built, task(s) executed, and then thrown away frequently within a 24 hour period). In short you'll likely save money by buying the real (physical) thing especially if your use case is mixed e.g. you need the horse power for some graphics but you also surf the net, watch TV etc and therefore your monthly use time will be high.
theboyfold said:
I'm looking for a laptop to replace my now dead 2014 Mac Book Pro. It was a great laptop, did everything I needed. Essentially it has enough grunt to run Lightroom / Photoshop and do some lightweight video editing.
Looking at laptops today. Mac Book Pros are out of reach cost wise. The world of PC laptops is so confusing it just puts me off. I like the look for the Asus Zenbook Book Pro, but it's not available anywhere. A friend of mine suggests an Asus gaming machine he uses for video work, but the battery life is woeful.
A friend of mine has suggested that I look at Virtual Desktops, running GPU intensive applications on AWS or Azure is now an option
My worry is about the location of the media, I have very fast download, but not not upload (thanks Virgin).
The budget for a laptop is around £1200 with room for wiggle and a bit of man maths.
I'm open to ideas. If you are going to suggest a laptop, I'd expect latest gen i7, decent SSD and ideally a 2nd HDD. Decent battery life and portability would be considered a big plus.
Or a decent screen and something that can run a virtual desktop (once I've learnt about them...)
Why not get your MB Pro fixed?Looking at laptops today. Mac Book Pros are out of reach cost wise. The world of PC laptops is so confusing it just puts me off. I like the look for the Asus Zenbook Book Pro, but it's not available anywhere. A friend of mine suggests an Asus gaming machine he uses for video work, but the battery life is woeful.
A friend of mine has suggested that I look at Virtual Desktops, running GPU intensive applications on AWS or Azure is now an option
My worry is about the location of the media, I have very fast download, but not not upload (thanks Virgin).
The budget for a laptop is around £1200 with room for wiggle and a bit of man maths.
I'm open to ideas. If you are going to suggest a laptop, I'd expect latest gen i7, decent SSD and ideally a 2nd HDD. Decent battery life and portability would be considered a big plus.
Or a decent screen and something that can run a virtual desktop (once I've learnt about them...)
jammy-git said:
Dell XPS, get one from the Dell Outlet website.
Dell XPS 15 would fit the bill. Had a 9350 for a couple years with the i7 quad-core, 16GB RAM, 3200x1800 screen and caching SSD, and just upgraded to the 9560 as wanted the 4K screen.Looking to sell the 9350 one actually if you wanted a cheaper option than buying new.
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