I have a $550 thinkpad x220 (from ebay): CPU Intel® Core™ i5-2540M CPU @ 2.60GHz × 4 (really two, with hyperthreading) GPU Intel HD 3000 RAM 16GB (another $100) 2x8GB HDD 7mm 1TB 5400rpm (another $100) encrypted w/ LUKS SSD mSATA 64GB (another $100 :P) encrypted w/ LUKS Daily I run ~3 VMs w/ virtualbox (win, GNU/Linux, osx), iceweasel with ~100 tabs >.>, icedove, some mp3 player, gnome-shell while driving two 1080p displays (1 on VGA, one on DisplayPort) It's quite speedy! Sometimes gnome-shell animations aren't smooth, but everything runs well. I used to have 8GB, but the computer sometimes became rather unresponsive with all 3 VMs running. :) The important thing is getting enough RAM. The x220 is nice because it has 2 RAM slots, 2 mSATA slots, a 2.5cm x 7mm SATA slot, & can drive 2 displays… I can't complain. On 10/27/2013 08:45 AM, ken wrote: > At long last it's time for a new laptop. I'm planning to run a lot on > it: at least 3 VMs (Windows, Linux, and Mac) under virtualbox. plus > server stuff like apache, MySQL, a CMS or two (likely drupal and > wordpress) in addition to a lot of 'workstation' kinds of apps like > Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP (on large photos), music- and other > audio-players, video player (to view movies on DVD), etc., etc. on the > Linux VM. > > In other words, there'll be a whole lotta stuff running on this machine. > And I want it to be responsive... not just "pretty good" and definitely > not sluggish. > > On my current (nearly ancient 150 MHz) laptop running Linux, I can do > everything "pretty good", except that when watching movies on it the > sound and video get out of sync and when I browse to some particularly > hoggish websites, the CPU load goes up to 4 or 5 or 6 or more. I don't > want that to happen on the Linux VM on the new laptop... or on the other > VMs either. > > So does anyone here run something like this? If so, what CPU and > graphics card does your system have and how much RAM does it have? Does > it run "pretty good"...? or slow...? or does everything come onscreen > the split-second the finger leaves the mouse button? Can you watch > movies and have the video and audio stay in sync? Does everything on > the web come up fast, or do some pages take awhile to render? > > > TIA for responses, favorable and unfavorable. > > Shopping with eyes open, > ken > >
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