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