9 Replies Latest reply on Dec 4, 2014 7:55 AM by Matt Lutton

Best Work Laptop for Tableau Use?

David Peeples Jan 19, 2013 7:51 AM

I wasn't sure where to post this question, so i thought i'd try here. I'm interested in recommendations for best laptops for business use. I'm upgrading my work machine and am curious about recommendations for a replacement.

Here's the main situation that i need to consider for use:

- i travel regularly and conduct customer presentations, mainly through Tableau

- i generally run tableau against data sets stored locally on my machine.

- for my presentations, i generally am connected to multiple sources and blend data frequently

- data sets are generally about ~1M records and i may be connecting to 4-5 sets in one tableau work-book

- since i travel regularly, i'd like to get an ultra-book...but not at the expense of risking performance issues

- my purchasing dept recommends that i get an HP but i can justify other models/makes if need be

- i want to avoid mac for multiple reasons, but could be convinced otherwise

Having said that, any suggestions?

thanks in advance,

Dave

1. Re: Best Work Laptop for Tableau Use?

Alex Kerin Jan 19, 2013 8:54 AM (in response to David Peeples)

Until there's a MAC specific version I would avoid that. I am running Tab on a 2.5 year old Dell and am a pretty heavy user. As there's no 64 bit version of Tableau, the 32 bit cannot make use of extra memory/cores (I believe that's right). Anything with decent spec should be fine. An ultrabook with SSD would probably work very well.

EDIT: apparently there is a 64bit version coming: http://community.tableau.com/message/191336#191336
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2. Re: Best Work Laptop for Tableau Use?

David Peeples Jan 20, 2013 6:51 PM (in response to Alex Kerin)

Thanks, i'm leaning toward an elitebook folio with ssd.
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3. Re: Best Work Laptop for Tableau Use?

Russell Christopher Jan 23, 2013 6:21 AM (in response to David Peeples)

I run a ~1.5 year-old Ultrabook (Samsung Series 9) with an i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 250GB SSD. Tableau is blazing fast on this thing, even a couple years after I bought it. I run both Desktop and Server on it full time.

Per Alex's comment, the data engine of Tableau is 64-bit, so definitely go with a 64-bit OS in order to take advantage of the extra memory address space.

Another thing to think about is the video card in the machine. Most ultrabooks use a built-in on-board graphics adapter. These suckers are generally "weak sauce" and aren't very useful for pushing lots of pixels around.

Normally this doesn't matter on business laptop...BUT, Tableau 8 can and will utilize the graphics card (via OpenGL) to render things more quickly. If you end up with a lower-range on-board graphics adapter, you lose this capability. In fact, with a crappy adapter, things can actually look "odd/fuzzy" inside Tableau until you turn OpenGL off inside the program.

Hope this gives you something to think about. I love buying a new laptop
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4. Re: Best Work Laptop for Tableau Use?

David Peeples Jan 22, 2013 7:04 AM (in response to Russell Christopher)

Russell,

Long time, no talk. Thanks for the feed-back, very helpful.You gave me a number of items that i never would have considered.

thanks again,

Dave
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5. Re: Best Work Laptop for Tableau Use?

David Peeples Mar 13, 2013 9:20 AM (in response to David Peeples)

Ultimately went with MBP 15, with bootcamp (windows 7, 64 bit). Hopefully we will see a tableau OSX version soon.

thanks for suggestions,

Dave
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6. Re: Best Work Laptop for Tableau Use?

Rina Bongsu-Petersen Nov 26, 2013 8:37 AM (in response to David Peeples)

Came across this thread...I'm shopping for a laptop and it must be Dell (company contract).
Anyone loving their Dell with Tableau?

Thanks!

Rina
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7. Re: Best Work Laptop for Tableau Use?

Matt Lutton Nov 26, 2013 8:45 AM (in response to Rina Bongsu-Petersen)

I'm on a Dell Latitude E5530 with 8GB Ram, 64 bit OS, and it has worked very well. One thing to note is there are some limitations with "accelerated graphics" in Tableau and some video cards don't work well with Accelerated Graphics in Tableau--including the Intel HD Graphics 4000 card on my machine. However, this is pretty minor and so far, I have not noticed any issues from turning off accelerated graphics. Hope this helps, our Server is on a separate machine.

More details on Accelerated Graphics: Requirements for Accelerated Graphics | Tableau Software
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8. Re: Best Work Laptop for Tableau Use?

Matt Lazarus Dec 4, 2014 7:49 AM (in response to David Peeples)

Are there any Tableau Software staff members out there? What laptop does Tableau issue as its company laptop? Surely that would be a good indication of which laptop to purchase..
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9. Re: Best Work Laptop for Tableau Use?

Matt Lutton Dec 4, 2014 7:55 AM (in response to Matt Lazarus)

Tech Specs/System Requirements can be found here:
All Technical Specifications | Tableau Software

I doubt there's any laptop standard for Tableau employees--some definitely use Macs, others use Windows machines, etc. I'm guessing they just need to be sure they have the specs needed to do their particular job productively.

I hope this helps! I'm not sure if an employee would be able to make any recommendations, other than pointing you to the system requirements, but there are some employees who contribute to this Forum so it is possible someone will have more guidance than I can provide.
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