My dad has an Alienware 15 (This Configuration) (TLDR: GTX 1060 core i5 7 Gen). I was thinking that would it be good enough to run Unity (Especially that FRUSTRATING lightmapper 
). Also I might do some light gaming on it. I just wanna know if I REALLY need to get a new laptop or not, because Iāve heard alienwares are nice pieces of gaming hardware. Thanks in advance ;).
P.S: this is my first forum post (I think) so please excuse any mistakes 
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Whatās your current laptop? 
@Ryiah : I had to read it like 3 times. But itās sounding like they are wanting to use their dadās Alienware 15 mentioned up top.
@Ryiah , @N1warhead_1 :
I have a dell latitude E5430 (Dell fanboy here:)) and my dad has an Alienware for work. Weāre planning on exchanging laptops as he doesnāt really need such a high end laptop and I do.
Lightmap / enlighten baking is slow on the strongest machines if you use poor settings or donāt know how to optimise it so the option of using fast settings, then switching to slow settings for nightly builds might be open to you.
Just a word of caution based on my previous experience with Alienware X51 on Windows 10.
caution The machine freezes after 10-15 minutes of idling (sometimes shorter) forcing a hard reset every single time. Checked around the internet and thereās quite a few cases like mine with Alienware. Even with all the latest driver and windows update it still frequently happens. Nobody seems to know whatās the cause (even tech support. Using desktop Skype instantly trigger the freeze. Fortunately I have the habit of saving after doing even minute changes so I didnāt encounter any disastrous losses.
Performance wise itās good, what takes ~15 minutes to bake on my PC is reduced to ~3-5 minutes (just approximation, I never timed them).
i5 3570 vs i7-6700
RX9 280 vs GTX960
8GB vs 16GB RAM
@ikazrima , @hippocoder : Lightmap baking takes a WHOLE NIGHT on my laptop (Scene with one terrain and a cube) and Iām highly annoyed by this. Iām pretty sure low specs are to blame and not bad optimisation
My dadās alienware never showed any problems and I donāt even use skype butā¦ thanks anyway for the heads up 
Youāre underestimating the power of your laptop. Lightmapping is entirely CPU-bound. Your dadās i5-7300HQ is only roughly half again as fast as your i7-3540M. A completely unoptimized scene will still take you most of your night.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-7300HQ-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3540M/m223877vsm921
Outside of the CPU and GPU, there isnāt anything your laptop canāt do that his can. Both laptops have the rather tight limit of 16GB of RAM and both can hold an SSD in place of the HDD. For an actual gaming laptop the Alienware 15 isnāt bad and it has good battery life, but itās somewhat inferior to the competition for a workstation.
https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GT62VR-Dominator-240-Powerful-i7-7700HQ/dp/B01NCQHZGC/
https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GT62VR-Dominator-Powerful-i7-7700HQ/dp/B01MY2NKH1/
That said even the processor in these two laptops isnāt miles better than your laptop. Intel has been rather slack with their releases and have only been bringing roughly 10% increases every generation.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-7700HQ-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3540M/m211019vsm921
I briefly had an alienware 15 but it had heating and throttling issues so I returned it.
And here I thought alien tech would be ahead of us piddly humanās tech.
If you have access to the laptop then donāt ask us to guess how good itāll be, install Unity and find out first hand.
Before you get carried away with getting new hardware, though, think about the kind of game(s) youāll be making. You might not need something as fancy (and expensive) as a recent gaming laptop to work productively. Are you currently doing Unity dev on your existing laptop, and are you actually having performance issues? If you are, do you really need something as fancy as an Alienware? (Though if circumstances make that a cost effective solution then go for it!)
Also think about more than the performance specs. Day to day use is important. I have a Surface Pro 4 and a 17" gaming laptop with a GTX1070 in it. Yesterday itās the Surface I grabbed when I left the house, because itās light, portable, and still powerful enough to do all I needed. I was fitting some work in during a commute, so the 17"er would actually have been pretty painful in that situation. Anyhow, think about stuff like how good the screen is, whether the keyboard/trackpad are comfortable, battery life (if itās important to you), weight and shape, and generally whether or not itās a thing youāll want to carry around with you day to day.
Alienware, eww.
Theyāre overpriced. At least they used to be.
I donāt know about elsewhere, but here āAlienwareā is a Dell brand, and the jump in price between āDellā and āAlienwareā products certainly does not look proportionate to the jump in specs. It looks like youāre paying quite a bit for the different branding.
Youād love their Alienware Area-51 Threadripper-based system. Itās cooled by an itty bitty 120mm AIO that according to Linusās benchmarks struggles to keep the system cool. For over $4,000 youād think theyād have invested in better cooling but apparently they felt that was unnecessary for the 180W TDP CPU the system ships with.
Iāll be honest, ever since I heard the rumor years ago about Dell reusing used components for new machines Iāve been distrustful of them. Not sure if itās true, but this implies it may be (last post).
I only skimmed that link, but from what I saw the only people claiming direct information from Dell (including the last post) were all specific that it was for warranty stuff, not new systems.
Sorry for not stating specs: Itās an i5 3rd Gen with an HDD and 6GB RAM and Intel HD (4000 I think)
I already have one at homeā¦ The question is that whether Iāll be able to use it for Unity or not
Honestly, I have a TON of laptop coolers lying in the attic just BEGGING me to use them
Not sure of that are we
You ARE right but my wifi sucks so installing unity takes HOURSā¦ maybe even DAYSā¦ OR Weeks(Donāt want to go through THAT trouble:rage:)
Oh sorry, I thought you were thinking about buying another.
As others have said, you can use Unity on potatoes, so Iām sure you can.
You can download Unity install files (somewhere which has better internet) and then move them to another computer. Thatās what I do sometimes.
^thisā¦ I mean, for reals. Obviously not a lot of us have the same gear as you do, so ādoingā instead of guessing is your only real answer.