My tax man told me to spend some money this year as I will be going solo next year and I have a few questions for you guys.
1. I am looking at desktop machines. I have budgeted around $600 (I hope thats enough) for the tower + $175ish for a monitor etc. I am not a computer guru so I was hoping some of you guys could give me some input. I have been looking at the IBM business class machines with 4-6 gigs using windows 7 but am open to suggestions. I will be running Carlson 2013. Thoughts Suggestions?
2. I have found a few end of the year deals on Carlson software as well, $1220 for intellicad and $2291 for imbedded autocad. I have never used intellicad but would be willing to try it for a $1071 savings and add autocad later if I didnt like it. What are you guys thoughts on this? I have budgeted for the full version. Am I asking for problems later by trying to add AutoCad to a product that did not come with it initially?
Thanks in advance
Intellicad will be fine , I have both Autocad and Intellicad , both will suite you fine.. i would look at Microsurvey as well .. Dont skimp on the tower get a dual graphics card for two monitors. Since everything is PDF now you will want the second monitor.
I use intellicad and I think it works just fine. The commands are pretty much the same. In my opinion go for a good laptop that you can take into the field and work from at your office. This has been a great things for me as a one man show.
I don't know that I would bother with Win7. I got a new machine a few weeks ago and the guy told me they don't get anything but Win8 machines.
I put down just shy of $600 and this beast is loaded up with horsepower. quad-core processors and a tera-byte drive.
I can't specifically to software issues. I'm still trying to figure some things out.
E
> I use intellicad and I think it works just fine. The commands are pretty much the same. In my opinion go for a good laptop that you can take into the field and work from at your office. This has been a great things for me as a one man show.
I agree, if you're going solo you need to be mobile... a powerful laptop is the way to go. With regard to intellicad, it isn't much different than autocad. I just put together something in Intellicad for the first time and it was pretty seemless. You just have to get used to the location of things and the icon differences in some cases.
Good luck in your venture
Ralph
For anybody looking for computers:
WWW.PRICEWACTH.COM
We just spoke with our computer guy about new machines. He provided me with some quotes. I red lined the quote adding speed, ram and decreasing hard drives. I told him about the site.
He returned with a new quote, so I asked if he looked at the site. He said no, why bother, they are all the same. So I called up the site and we looked up a couple of parts. He took the quote away and returned with one that was much less. He is also marketing new computers more and believes he can actually compete with the box stores.
I've been running Carlson acad on a Dell Inspiron for about a bunch of years now with no problems. I use a 27" Dell monitor with that one. The monitors have really dumped in price.
A couple years ago I got an Asus EEE netbook which serves as my "I'll come to your office/site" machine and for the $300 I paid it has been a Godsend. Both are windows XP. I'm looking around to upgrade the Dell and I dread changing OSs.
I was thinking about a laptop as I use a dell laptop with a docking station and dual monitors now however I have had several personal laptops crap-out after a couple of years and have been leery of them since. One of my Co-workers uses 4 monitors with 12 gigs of ram on his machine. talk about being productive. Does anyone have experience with the IBM business laptops or any IBM machine for that matter,they come with a standard 3 year come to your business and fix it warranty they have good reviews and the prices are right as well
SWAG,
I am with the others on the MicroSurvey software... I would look at it too. I am running MicroSurvey 2013 with the IntelliCAD engine. I have had no issues so far with the software. The MicroSurvey brand also supports many different methods of raw data import. I have been very imressed with their Tech Support.
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