I'm ready to buy a new laptop to replace my Dell M6400 Covet. I'm a contract engineer and have to travel frequently on planes so a lugable workstation isn't an options. I do everything from small simple models and drawings, to large 500 part assemblies, as well as running stress analysis using shell models, but occasionally solid elements. I'm looking at the Dell M6800 with the i7-4940MX processor, 32 GB ram, and the K5100M graphics card. Where I'm getting hung up is the hard drives. Standard hard drive is a 500GB 7200 rpm drive. They also have a 1TB traditional hard drive, but it is only 5400 rpm. I have a 480 GB SSD drive in my workstation at home and love it, but the costs Dell is listing for the SSD upgrades seem rather steep. $750 to get a 512 GB SSD and $1050 for the 1 TB SSD. Does this seem out of line? I've always built my home computers, so am I crazy to think about buying a new laptop with the cheap hard drive in it and then replacing the hard drive as soon as I get it with a good quality SSD drive from Newegg or similar vendor?
I use an M6500 as a consultant doing analysis and have been VERY PLEASED with it's performance.
Yes. Laptop SSD is way overpriced but WELL WORTH IT. Analysis uses a bunch of memory but also stores a lot of data in files.
In my case, I opted for a 256GB SSD (OS/Applications) with an additional 500GB hard drive for storage. With the amount of files/data/software that I was working with It became clear that this was not enough space to store everything (on both drives). So as part of my process, I routinely store/archive/backup customer files to an 1TB EXTERNAL hard drive.
Given the choice, I would opt for a much larger SSD.
You might want to check with CRUCIAL:
Computer upgrades for Dell Precision Mobile Workstations Precision M6400 from Crucial
They can offer a significant cost savings over the standard factory installed DELL SSD.