Large Scale Central

Computer hardware requirements

Modeling Technical Modeling
#21

Jim Harris said:

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Dan: Yes it could, but I already told SWMBO that I had to have a new laptop, so lets not spoil it for me.

Greg: Thanks. That will bring the price down quite a bit. I might cut the ram in half also.

David: Isn’t it human nature to want the biggest, baddest, fastest whatever in the world? I used to work for a computer manufacturer. I get the “next” thing.

Rooster: Nothing top secret, but if I told you I would have to kill my computer.

Michael: Good to know. This will save me some money. I can use it to buy filament and 3D printer upgrades.

Not really. I am a cheep bas person. So I get what will do the job, with some extra for the next job. But I don’t pony up the bucks for the top of the line.

#22

Decided not to buy anything at this time.

As I am writing this I’m using the media creation tool to make an iso file to burn to the dvd (for Windows 10 64bit).

My laptop is old and will not boot from a flash drive.

I have another drive for the laptop to use as a test subject for the install.

Also decided that if I bought all that expensive hardware it would go into a tower and keep it in my home office.

If my laptop will do everything I need to do I’m not buying anything new for now.

#23

Now you will have plenty of cash for filament!

#24

If you are getting a laptop, then get it with an 8th gen Intel cpu.

There is a HUGE difference in the MOBILE chipset between the previous generations and the new 8th gen… for example 7th gen MOBILE chipsets are 2 core, not 4 core (the desktop chipset was 4 core).

The machine I just built at home is an i5 which does not have the hyperthreading of an i7, but it is 6 core. I’d go desktop unless you absolutely need a laptop. You will pay less and get more performance. Also you can start with the built in graphics and add a more powerful graphics card later (normally you only need a high performance card to view and move 3d objects, not the number crunching part)

You can get small desktop cases, and you pay less for your video if it’s not in a laptop, and you should have a nice big monitor anyways.

Greg

#25

Greg: Thank you for the info.

So the windows 10 pro 64bit was a waste of time. Did a fresh install (delete partition, create new ones, format, no left over baggage).

After an endless amount of updates, and bandwidth gobbling the laptop reboots, and I’m left with a “no video” condition.

I thought about taking it out to the shop, and giving it a go in my 40 ton press.

I downloaded a free copy of Linux. Burn iso to dvd and bootup in laptop. It finds everything, and the display is now working.

It’s like a new laptop now. I found some cad programs for Linux; Cura, Blender, and Bricscad.

I liked it so much I stuck another drive in my old tower, and installed Linux on it too. Best $0.00 dollars I’ve ever not spent.

They do encourage donations for development, so I guess it wouldn’t kill me to send them money.

I am done with windows!

My wife’s new laptop showed up today. I got to plug the charger in so it would be charged when she got home (I am not supposed to touch it). I wonder how it would do with Linux on it?

#26

older laptops won’t have windows 10 drivers, they all are in it together to make you buy new hardware. The embedded video in laptops is the big pain (although it can normally be solved)

If you did a fresh install on an older laptop, the normal thing that happens is you lose your video driver and it gets replaced with a generic one. If someone advised you that is the best way, i.e. clean install, please don’t get advice from that person again (I did not look to see if it was someone on this thread).

The update/upgrade will inspect your machine and tell you if it will have issues. That’s the way. Also, the best thing is to update all your drivers with a program like Driver Booster, so Microsoft is not even tempted to replace your drivers with it’s own.

Anyway, if you can find the software you need on Linux, your life will be simpler and not subject to all the “creeping featurism” that is so rampant in the PC and Phone markets.

Greg

#27

It’s the laptop that had Win7 pro that was upgraded to Win10 pro. Worked for couple years until I upgraded to win10 pro 64bit.

It has the ATI mobility radeon 3650 graphics chip. It had video until the mandatory updates loaded.

Used to be able to put it in sleep mode, and when it came out the video would come back. It runs very well now that the bloated micro$oft stuff is gone.

Linux has a program (wine) that will allow you run some software for windows. Haven’t tried it yet.

I’ve gone over to the dark side now. Seems I have forgotten a lot of the unix command line.

I used to work on Sun Micro systems, Silicon Graphics, and the big IBM’s. We built servers, and high end workstations. I can’t say who our clients were. I had to sign one of those forms.

Both the laptop, and tower are working fine. I can swap out the drive in the laptop for another os, and the tower also if needed.

#28

So changing to 64 bit was the killer… yep, older laptop with no win 10 video drivers. Strange it was not 64 bit windows 7 in the first place…

I’ve had bad luck with upgrades with ATI, the Nvidia chips seem to be much better, like 8 year old ones still fine with the latest win10, and still getting driver updates for the old product from Nvidia itself.

Yep, Windows is bloated, and every month they invent something new and change the old, for example they came out with a new screen grabber program, the old “Snipping tool” that worked fine is going away, the new one is “snip and stretch”… a bunch of new capabilites, but no longer saves JPEG files, only PNG files… why? stupid stupid.

Greg

#29

Why? Perhaps because PNG files usually are bigger and if one sells cloud space … go figure eh?

Their making money, rarely improves our lot.

#30

Finally researched it a little… ugh, don’t like the answers I got…

First cut, jpg is lossy compression, png is lossless… you will see the difference more in line drawings than actual photos…

OK, advantage png

Next, file size, png can be significantly larger

OK, advantage jpg

Last, and this is what I just found out: you cannot embed EXIF data into png…

BOOM, your are out PNG…

I put the exif data in my pictures, that way when I share them, it stays… doing the family tree and the information on who, what where, and comments are now embedded into the file itself, like the data in a mp3 file…

Staying with jpg…

#31

Jim Harris said:

It’s the laptop that had Win7 pro that was upgraded to Win10 pro. Worked for couple years until I upgraded to win10 pro 64bit.

It has the ATI mobility radeon 3650 graphics chip. It had video until the mandatory updates loaded.

Used to be able to put it in sleep mode, and when it came out the video would come back. It runs very well now that the bloated micro$oft stuff is gone.

Linux has a program (wine) that will allow you run some software for windows. Haven’t tried it yet.

I’ve gone over to the dark side now. Seems I have forgotten a lot of the unix command line.

I used to work on Sun Micro systems, Silicon Graphics, and the big IBM’s. We built servers, and high end workstations. I can’t say who our clients were. I had to sign one of those forms.

Both the laptop, and tower are working fine. I can swap out the drive in the laptop for another os, and the tower also if needed.

I too am experimenting with the dark side. I am testing 2 versions of Linux Mint xfce 18.3 and the newer 19 writing this on a linux machine. I am doing this because I have 2 older computers one is 10+ years old and the other newer (it has Vista installed). So far I am leaning toward 18.3.

I have not heard many good reports about Wine in fact I read on the net that it can allow Win viruses into the Linux machine, you can believe everything on the net right!!.

I am connecting the 2 machines via an ethernet cable with the really old one running XP for my windows programs. I am really not concerned about hackers getting into XP as it only contains some train info which is backed up elsewhere. If they want to look at my model trains I say fill your boots.

My main computer has Win 10 with all the associated bloatware that came with it and is starting to run like a arthritic snail.

#32

Now now, lets not get too dark here, Linux is bright and sunny (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)

#33

Graeme, You are right about “Wine” . I didn’t have much luck with “PlayinLinux” either. It’s a front end for “Wine”.

My wife’s new laptop has win10 64bit. She wanted to play a DVD, but win10 want’s you to go to the MS store, and buy a program.

On my Linux Mint 19 tower I put a DVD in, and it installed “VLC” for me. I found VLC for win10 64bit, and installed on the wife’s laptop for free.

The old laptop acts like a new one. Everything works faster. I also noticed the fan is not always full on, and the power supply is not as hot as it was with win10 just warm? Just an observation.

I like the Timeshift feature. You can make a snapshot of your system, and schedule daily, weekly, monthly, snapshots, or do a manual one before making changes.

You can restore your computer to the time before you screwed up stuff.

Unlike ms, Linux comes somewhat bare bones. It does has programs that are compatible with the ms office suite. Can even save files in ms formats.

It lets you install what you want to use as opposed to having everything forced on you.

Martin, Yes Linux is bright and sunny! It’s a good day when you don’t have the boot of ms on your neck. I’m free! Free at last!

#34

Well, I get pilloried at the office (bunch of Mac nuts) but I am actually a big Win 10 fan too. Coworker gave me a 5 year old Dell XPS about a month ago. (I traded him for eggs, I have chickens) Four cores, 3Ghz. He had pulled the HD though. I stuck in a 500G SSD, a 1TB HD and 24G of ram. Bought a brand new copy of Win 10 Home and man, its very fast. One thing I really like is the Linux bash shell in the windows command window. Very neat. Anyhow, I keep it real clean, nothing but my main development programs. Android Studio on the old machine was so slow booting up I had to go brew a cup of coffee (and grind the beans first too) before it came up. Takes about 15 seconds now.

But I do love Linux as well. I have Ubuntu on a laptop in my shop for general puttering and all my server stuff is Centos Linux.

#35

Good score on the Dell XPS.

I need to find something like that to upgrade my old tower.

#36

Jim Harris said:

Good score on the Dell XPS.

I need to find something like that to upgrade my old tower.

I have just chucked Mint 18.3 onto an old desktop and I am liking what I am seeing except that samba will not load but that is a question for the mint forum.

#37

I’m curious, why mint? I had never heard of it before, I had to google it up.

#38

My bil stopped by, and mentioned he wanted to switch from ms to Linux. Having experienced video failure (non hardware) it got me to thinking.

In which box of software is my old Linux red hat disk? So I googled Linux, and started lookin around. After reading some stuff I decided on Linux Mint 19.

If I didn’t like it I could always try another version. It is free. I will most likely try some other flavors, and settle on one that fits.

At that point I will make a donation to the cause because that is what keeps it free. I do appreciate the hard work the teams put in to producing a great product.

#39

Jim, I just purchased a laptop that kind of has to do double duty.

I tend to buy computers that will last pretty long, i.e. most people might say “overkill”, but then in 2 years they are still mostly even with the newest and still very serviceable in 5 years.

My present portable machine is a 5th generation Intel i7 but I have been killing it with solidworks files lately. 8 gigs ram.

I figured to get a 6 core i7 and I don’t care about battery life of tons of hours, 99% of the time it is plugged in.

So I also wanted a pretty good graphics card, although remember that most 3d cad programs have very different requirements from gaming, so many people recommending gaming cards when they won’t have that dramatic effect.

I evaluated the Lenovo machines, the 920, the P series, etc, and a few others, and found that the smallest I will wind up with (I always use external monitors except when travelling) would be a 15 inch screen, the 14 inch units just don’t have the higher-end processors.

I wound up ordering an HP Spectre 360 15T, with a 6 core 8700 series i7, and 16 gig ram… most machines have either the built in graphics in the chipset (not great) or an ATI card (not good in the long haul, another discussion) or a very low end Nvidia card (almost same performance as the chipset graphics)… this one has an option for an Nvidia 1050Ti card, this is a very powerful card, and while it’s a good gaming card, it will also support the 3 external monitors I normally use, and at least 2 external 4k monitors.

If I can be of more assistance in giving you what I have learned and the pro’s vs. cons feel free to email me privately, since there’s people on the forum and indeed this thread who have given me grief because I mentioned I have 14 computers as computers are a hobby, and thus my opinions are worthless. So before that person erupts at me again, I’d prefer more details be taken offline.

Greg

p.s. getting rid of 2 computers so slimming down ha ha

#40

Jim Harris said:

My bil stopped by, and mentioned he wanted to switch from ms to Linux. Having experienced video failure (non hardware) it got me to thinking.

In which box of software is my old Linux red hat disk? So I googled Linux, and started lookin around. After reading some stuff I decided on Linux Mint 19.

If I didn’t like it I could always try another version. It is free. I will most likely try some other flavors, and settle on one that fits.

At that point I will make a donation to the cause because that is what keeps it free. I do appreciate the hard work the teams put in to producing a great product.

Just upgrade to Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon, its running of a live DVD at the moment so I am using to see if I have any issues with it and so far haven’t come across any. Its supported till 2023 so It is more than likely the candidate for installation I started with Mint 17 and worked up.

I will make a donation as well.

Not having the need for a real modern computer with what I do this old machine will do me fine till it blows up all my data is on 2 external drive2 which are a carbon copy of each other and are connected to different computers a sort of redundancy I suppose.