I live and breathe MATLAB, though my personal copy of said product is <ahem> R2006b, and I am not interested in spending $5000 for a new license on my researcher salary. I also do C++ (gcc/MSVC10 with the Boost uBLAS library), Mathematica, image and video processing, and have really wanted to take up CUDA programming in my free time. You know, after I put the wife and kids to bed.
I have identified the Lenovo Y510p as a likely candidate, and it seems fairly well suited. It's got a Haswell i7, "enough" RAM, and an nVidia 750m card for GPGPU programming. I can take the mechanical HD out and swap a real sized SSD, sticking the mechHD into an UltraBay. It should be within my budget once Christmas and confiscatory Tax bills are paid, but I have a nagging feeling that I just have not kept up with TR stuff enough to know what I'm missing. Are there other comparable laptops (like Alienware?) that don't cost twice the Y510P? I'd like:
- i7 quad core or better
- discrete video card, preferably nVidia since it seems MATLAB has a native GPGPU interface to it
- SSD >= 256GB
- >= 8GB RAM
- 1080p display, though I will mostly have this slaved to a dedicated monitor
- A decent keyboard
- An SD card slot and enough USB/etc,
- room for a 2nd HD? or spend the extra money on a 480GB SSD
Thanks,
Sandman