AutoCAD Laptop?

I picked the dell D830 series and it does a good job of handling most I throw at it....it is a T7500 with 2 gigs of ram and I went with the 140 series graphics...

I am quite pleased and I stayed with Win XP pro with the option to upgrade to Vista once the bugs get worked out.

This card is not high end, but the 2.20 duo core processor can handle the number crunching

Max resolution 1792 X1344....good for rendering

I use AutoCad on a regular basis but not very often on a laptop because laptop keyboards are a pain for commands unless you plan on only using the icons. As far as specs. go get 2 gigs of ram if you can , 1 will suffice but 2 is nice for speed, at least a 2 ghz dual core processor and get a fairly large hard drive as well at least 100 gigs for storage and more if your doing 3d renderings. I also have an external 500 gig hard drive for back up and a 16 gig jump drive for toting my plans around with me when needed.

Also the bigger the screen the better at least 17inch . 15 is way too small. I don't really know how high of resolution you can get on a laptop but i have 1680 by 1050 on my desktop.

Good Luck

PS- I use Windows XP Pro and not Vista as well but you better hurry as XP will not be offered any longer in about 4 months. Also stay away from Dell, As far as a graphics card gos make sure its speed is at least 256 and try and get a set up so you can run 2 monitors ( great help with cad. ) Try a company called Matrox

Dell is a good site because you can customize most models with either XP or Vista. You want XP, so you can check the selections they have.

Since AutoCAD isn't really graphics-intensive (I've seen Windows 98 computers run AutoCAD, maybe your version is) you might not need a very expensive PC.

Dell has different selections and styles. XPS is the best line, but Inspiron is also good. XPS is for hardcore gaming and more powerful applications, mostly gaming.

Here's a little guideline of what you might need for a PC:

Hard drive: 7200RPM speed

Processor: Dual-core

RAM: 2GB or so

Graphics: NVIDIA or Radeon, anything other than Intel

Maybe you won't even need an advanced graphics card, I don't know, but a 7200RPM hard drive makes for improved performance, including a dual-core processor and RAM.

Good luck.

I think the best config for your requirement would be at least a 2 GHz processor (Intel Core maybe- or any intel dual processor, i'm not so sure about AMD stuff) with at least 1GB RAM, since you'll be doing a lot of CAD, go for an 80 or 120 GB SATA hard drive. Vista isn't too bad. You may want to think about that.

I'm assuming your auto cad version is 2007 or earlier and your other programs you paid a lot for are not vista compatable; hence WIN XP. Tiger directs web site has a good " build" program for system max that gives you a large variety of choices (hardware and software) and just what auto cad, maya etc... need