My sister is looking for a laptop for MS SQL dev

[Bateluer]

And I'm out of my league. And she wasn't able to tell me how large or intense he planned DBs will be. She's looking to start her own business.

She linked me a 17in Asus ROG laptop, with an i7 4700HQ, 16GBs of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 1TB mechanical drive. 1800 dollars and 10 pounds. I may not be fully versed in the requirements of MS SQL, but I'm fairly sure it doesn't get any benefit from the gaming GTX 770M in that Asus either.

I suggest a Lenovo Y50 4K, same CPU, RAM and SSD, minus the mechanical drive. 15.6in, 4K IPS display, and 5.3lbs, for 1300 dollars.

What she did tell me are that she wants to be able to connect at least 2 external monitors to it, preferably 3. And that she would prefer a docking station. She also wasn't opposed to a desktop, but would strongly prefer a laptop. She travels between different states fairly frequently. She apparently has little to no budget limit.

Suggestions?

 

[giantpandaman2]

Stay away from the consumer lines. Get the business lines. They're far more robust and easier to fix. Few things can stall a business than having a mission critical computer die.

Both Lenovo and Asus make good laptops, but I'd move to the Thinkpad and AsusPro lines respectively.

 

[heymrdj]

Yup docking stations are pretty much pro line only, otherwise you're stuck with the "USB Port Replicators". I recommend HP Elitebooks.

 

[Lean L]

Mssql dev? Pretty much any laptop then since it will all reside on the server with potentially a local instance for testing? Although I agree get a business laptop.

 

[Bateluer]

Mssql dev? Pretty much any laptop then since it will all reside on the server with potentially a local instance for testing? Although I agree get a business laptop.

Well, probably not. She's been doing SQL work for a few years now, and looking to start her own business developing SQL DBs for clients.

But I'll refer her to the business and Pro lines.

 

[mfenn]

The RAM is the most important thing. 16GB should be good for development purposes because you need enough to load up SQL Server itself (it doesn't scale down very well), plus your development environment (I'm guessing Visual Studio?). The actual databases themselves will probably be literally megabytes when doing development work, so they won't add much to the memory or storage requirements.

 

[Cerb]

Get an SSD, and don't skimp on the RAM. IMO, the next thing to be concerned with is the display. TN or IPS isn't too important, but you'll want a non-glossy (anti-glossy) to stare at all day. CPU doesn't really matter, as long a sit is a mainstream one, not low-end. GPU only matters as far as driving external high-res displays.

If she wants monitors and a dock, see what the Latitudes, Precisions, Thinkpads, and Elitebooks offer. Lenovo seems to have the best options, but I can't vouch for the quality of implementation of models that have good displays, and good dock options 9the reviews certainly aren't good for the docks, but that doesn't say how widespread the bugs are, either). Dell makes it too hard to find out what they offer, still, but it looks like only 2 monitors, for most of their docks. HP's website sucks, so I gave up looking.

USB docks are not the same thing, and not suitable replacements. Also consider that despite the high hardware costs, having the software costs for only one computer, rather than two, will generally make up for it.

Also, look into Fujitsu. Sometimes they have Goldilocks offerings, but their support presence in the U.S. is lacking, so it can be a hard decision.

 

[KentState]

At my last job, I used an HP Elitebook 8570w and it did a pretty good job, but was nowhere close to hosting the DB on a server. Then again, I was running the entire SQL Server stack (DB, SSIS, SSAS and SSRS) which ate into the RAM and cpu. What type of DB work will she be doing?

And like others said, stay away from consume laptops as you won't get a dock most likely.

 

[mike8675309]

Is she traveling such that the laptop screen will be her primary interface, or will she be able to use an external monitor? SQL development requires both coding, as well as GUI tool manipulation. A 1366 x 768 resolution screen isn't going to cut it nor will a 1080p screen likely be ideal.

For most developer laptops you want lots of memory (Visual Studio, IIS, and SQL Server all like RAM). For example, to get more than 8gig of memory in a laptop from DELL you will need to look at their Inspiron 15 or 17 7000 series which starts around $1450 , XPS 15 at $2000, Alienware 17 at $2100 or the Precision line starting around $3200.

HP laptops with over 8GB of RAM requires their EliteBook 850 at around $1900, ZBook 14 at around $2300 or their Zbook 17 at $3000.

Note with Dell you can shop their Outlet and buy a previous generation version of their higher end precision equipment for a more reasonable price. The benefit being on the Precision and Latitude equipment is that the accessories like docs, as well as parts remain available for quite a while. I.e. right now they have som Precision M6700 units for under $2500 with one as low as $1919.

 

[Cerb]

$1450? $3200? Latitudes starting from around $600 can take 16GB, and you don't even have to break $2k to get a Precision that can take 32GB (you just have to buy it with 8GB, or spend a long time on the phone to try to get it customized). I mean, she probably will, but there's no need to go into lines that have such base prices.

Just avoid consumer lines from the major PC OEMs, like the Inspirons or Alienwares. Some of the XPSes make nice cross-overs, though.

Lenovos seem to be good deals for getting 3-4k displays, with docks that can add 2-3 monitors, but again, I can't personally speak to their quality (IE, are the bad reviews of the docks a few people having issues, or a few out of many actually reporting them?). If I were doing that work on the go, I would consider getting an IPS anti-glare display of high resolution to be paramount. At 3-4k, 200% Windows DPI can be used, and at 200%, the bitmap scaling, where needed, doesn't look like crap. If I were occasionally on the go, I'd take any old AG 1080P screen, and spend a boatload on the monitors, instead.

 

[KentState]

Was going to say, even at the higher rates that CDW charges, my loaded HP 8570w was $2k with the higher LED backlit 080p panel, SSD, 16GB and quad core - 8 thread processor. I have done SQL Server, Teradata, Oracle database development as well as Aster and Hadoop on work laptop for years at or below 1080p and have not had any issues. On top of that, I also do .NET development and some scripting in Perl and Python and never had issues with resolution. Yes, I always dock to a 3+ monitor setup now that's possible, but never had problems when traveling.