Dave,
Congratulations on the move, glad to see you back on here!
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I'm finally in the market for a new workstation, and I wanted to get your advice on what make & model. I know you liked Lenovo, but they had some issues on their product line the past couple of years, and you weren't very happy with the changes they made. This year, it looks like they're starting to come around with decent products.
Yes indeed, they fixed the issue with the TrackPoint buttons, which had been a deal-breaker on the previous versions.
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Can I get your advice on what you'd recommend as a really nice workstation laptop? I'm looking at the Think Station P-70 models, but I need your input on what base unit to get and what parts I can get later and install myself to cut down on the overall initial cost.
Based on the software you listed, and especially the desire to edit 4K video, I would definitely start with the P50 or P70, depending on the screen size you want. As for configuration, here is a good article on system requirements for editing 4K video:
https://www.videomaker.com/article/f6/1 ... quirementsAs you can see it is not only system RAM that matters, but also how much memory is in the video card. Your biggest decision would be which version of the NVIDIA Quadro graphics card to get. It seems that you want at least one of the two offered with 4GB, but you would be best off with the 8GB card, unfortunately that adds $1,200 to the price. I would also consider ordering one of the two faster optional processors, but I'd say there is no need for the "Xeon" versions. Both the processor and video card would be relatively difficult and/or expensive to upgrade later, so get the best you can afford at the outset.
However for things like RAM and storage drives I would get the absolute minimum configuration from Lenovo (minimum RAM and 1 HDD) and then order what you really want from Newegg or Amazon instead, that way you will potentially save hundreds to even a thousand dollars or more.
The system has support for up to 2 standard 2.5" SATA3 (HDD or SSD) drives and two M.2 SATA3 or PCIe SSDs. I would recommend the PCIe SSDs as the transfer speeds on those are 4 to 5x faster than SATA3. I'd probably start with 32GB of RAM and one or two Samsung M.2 PCIe SSDs for storage/working drives:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820147467 I'd get the standard optical drive in the bay, then order as an accessory a SATA bay adapter:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd022801That will allow you to easily install or remove standard 2.5" drives to use as working or backup drives. I'd also recommend getting the Workstation dock (*not* one of the USB docks) as that makes connecting power, multiple monitors, wired networking, USB devices and external speakers as easy as setting the system in the dock:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/acc100247Let me know if you have any other questions, Scott.
