Over the past few weeks I’ve been wrestling with the choice of a new laptop. It wasn’t so much a question of “if” as “when”. My spec list was pretty high…Core i7 processor, at least 6GB of RAM, and 1900+ screen resolution. I knew this would not be a netbook sized purchase so I tried to make sure I was getting the best value possible. At the same time I’m working on a proposal for my company of what our BI consultants should carry. Lots and lots of variables going into an intensely important choice.
The final choice…ooh baby
I decided to go with the HP Envy 15. It met all my spec requirements above and had the thin, clean look of a Mac Book Pro without the $3,000 price tag. The one “give” on the Envy is that it has no optical drive. Not a killer for me as I mostly deal in ISO for software and don’t do a lot of music/movie consumption that isn’t already in iTunes or stored on my home server. After a weekend of heavy usage it has proven to be exactly what I wanted.
Performance you say?
But enough about the shiny outside and rubberized keyboard, can this laptop actually handle the load of BI development? That would be a yes. The picture above is my laptop in its current state…which has open instances of Outlook, IM, SSMS, TweetDeck, Word, Visual Studio, and iTunes. The best statement I can make to performance is that I FORGOT that I had SQL Server services running in Automatic startup. Had I not been looking to start my instance for some demo code I could have happily zipped along with no impact.
So I’m writing this post today with a smile on my face, perhaps even a bit of a smirk after showing this laptop to a couple of my fellow Slalom consultants (who’s competitive?). If you are in the market for a great laptop with higher end specs you should take a look at the HP Envy.
NOTE: I was not compensated by HP or any HP representative for this post. That said, if anyone from HP is reading and wants to send me a free one I’m all for it.
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