As I was trying to download fusion 360 last night and the old HP pavilion screeched and wheezed itself out of its slumber I realized I purchased this thing in 2008.
I haven't payed any attention to this segment since about that time.
Educate me on current things I need to know.
Is a chromebook a thing I need to look at?
There are solid options all over the price range.
What are your needs? What are your intended uses? What sorts of features or traits are most desirable to you?
Do you have a target budget or hard budget cap?
In reply to Beer Baron :
The only thing that I will likely be using it for is 3D modeling in fusion 360 and setting up 3D printing slicer files. With the possible addition of maybe a cnc router and laser engraver in the near future.
To be honest I haven't even opened this one up in over a year.
But if they change my work schedule like they've been taking about I'm going to have approximately double the time off and am trying to get things setup so I have some things going on to occupy my time.
In reply to Beer Baron :
Let's put the budget cap at around a grand and preferably in a range of about half that.
In reply to Nick Comstock :
Don't bother with a chromebook, they're just glorified phones.
I'd be looking at Lenovos offerings in that price range.
I would actually recommend looking at used options, they're a lot like cars, you can get lightly used models at a big discount just because someone took it off the lot..err display shelf. Of all the laptops I've owned, only one was bought new.
Here's some grm chatter from a couple years back including my input of the refurb I bought. I'm still very happy with it.
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/pick-me-out-a-laptop/176493/page1/
I'm not so sure what I bought would be great at digital 3D modeling. You probably will want to focus on a fast processor and lots of ram.
Is a desktop an option?
Top of your range but this will do all you need and will last quite a few years.
It takes a pretty healthy computer to run Fusion. It also takes a healthy graphics card. I ended up buying a gaming desktop when I was using it a lot.
Anything lesser was a grind to use. It would take minutes to render 3d objects and I got sick of waiting.
Fwiw, my Lenovo Yoga 6 runs Fusion pretty well. But I picked up an M1 Mac Mini that I use for most of my modeling. Even though Fusion hasn't been ported to the new architecture yet, it's still pretty darn quick.
In reply to Slippery :
A desk top would likely suit my needs better. For some reason I completely forgot they existed.
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