Budget laptop on the way

Well the boss (the wife) let me order a new laptop. Ours is about to finally die. Did not want to spend a whole lot so I ordered a Dell Inspiron15 from the Dell outlet.

Specs:

AMD AthlonII dual-core 2.3Ghz

4gb ram

320gb hdd

8x DVD-RW

ATI HD4250

Not a monster by any means but it should run ACAD and SU well enough for occasional use.

I'm in need of one myself. I've been looking at used Workstation class on eBay and Craigslist. Dell Precision M6500 is what I'm after, specifically for my BIM designs. Even used, they are going between $600-$800, plus its one of the few laptops that have an actual docking station, not some USB gimmick device that someone tries to act like one.

Yeah for BIM you'd need a workstation for sure. Have a look at geeks.com. They have refurb units there.

Hows the new laptop then? I've never had an AMD CPU before - are they pretty much the same as Intel?

It is doing good. I installed r2012 on it and it ran it with ease. I don't expect to do any heavy ACAD 3D stuff but 2D drawings are no problem. AMD cpus are not as fast/powerful as Intel but they are less expensive. I also have a new Desktop at home with a quad-core AMD cpu and it handles everything I throw at it. The only thing I don't like about AMD is that they bought ATI graphics and use them in every thing. My desktop was an easy fix as I disabled the ATI graphics and installed an nVidia GF card. I can't do this on the laptop but for what I paid it will work.

So the ATI graphics is is actually built-on to the AMD CPU??????

Yes it is but still WAY better than an onboard Intel video solution. AMD actually has a new line of APU's. Current 2012 models are DX11 and OpenGL 4.x ready. I don't like integrated units but if I have to settle then I'll this kind will work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion#2012_platforms