Guide to Workstation Laptops

Many people use laptops as a convenience and rely on a desktop machine to handle the heavy duty graphics workstation type tasks. When you require top end performance you can't really beat a desktop but these days laptops are becoming quite powerful and depending on your requirements you may be able to take your workstation wherever you want.

Laptops for the Photo Editor or 2D Graphics Artist

Graphics and photo editors such as Photoshop can be demanding on mainly the processor and memory but it is also important to have a large high resolution screen so you can see more of your work without having to scroll up/down/left/right all the time. USB, USB 2.0, Firewire (otherwise known as iLink or IEEE1394) should also be included to handle all the peripherals you may use.

Laptops for 3D Design or CAD Engineers

There isn't a laptop that can compete with a desktop workstation designed for 3D modeling and rendering, but there are options if you really want to do this type of work on the road or want the convenience of bringing your workstation to and from the workplace.

A good graphics card will be needed besides the obvious requirement of a fast processor, large amount of ram, and large hard disk. Not just any graphics card but one designed to be 100% OpenGL compliant, stable, and accurate.

Here is a list of of workstation graphics chips/cards for laptops:

The ATI Mobility FireGL T2, Nvidia Quadro FX Go700, and Nvidia Quadro FX Go1000 are older but should still be commonly available in mobile workstation laptops, the FX Go1000 claims to be up to 50% faster than the Go700 in some applications.

All graphics cards or chips are based on mainstream counterparts from each manufacturer but are optimized for professional applications. These optimizations are mostly through certified drivers which also provide stability and accuracy, the workstation class graphics solutions listed above are faster than the mainstream counterparts when it comes to professional 3D applications.

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