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I'm looking for a new laptop to replace a 2017 Dell XPS 13. I'm a software developer.

I've seen a very appealing HP Dragonfly machine that ticks all my boxes - I was about to push the button and order it when I noticed that that particular machine has the i7 1165-G7 cpu which isn't marked vPro - there is a machine above it which has the 1185 cpu which is labelled vPro (and which sells for a bit more money).

My question is: do I need a vPro cpu in my life or is it something which only really benefits IT administrators (for remote management etc.) ? I will eventually need to be able to run Docker and possibly other virtualisation software on the machine so I don't want to put it out of the running by buying an incompatible machine.

immutabl
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2 Answers2

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To understand whether you can benefit from vPro, it’s important to understand what it is. vPro is mostly marketing. I unfortunately cannot provide an authoritative list of logo requirements. From Wikipedia and the top of my head, there are, among others:

  • Certain Intel CPUs (with hardware-assisted virtualization etc.)
  • Certain Intel Wi-Fi hardware
  • Certain Intel Ethernet interfaces
  • Intel Active Management Technology (AMT)
  • Signed firmware updates
  • Some other low-level security/anti-theft stuff

The first three points are also of interest to consumers/“pro-sumers”. High-performance network connectivity is great. So are CPUs with lots of features.

However, if you take a good look, you can see that you’ll get most of these benefits even without a vPro logo. Just check the specs of the device you want to buy and whether they satisfy your requirements. Especially hardware-assisted virtualization is present in many, if not most, modern CPUs.

AMT is a special case and of interest to enthusiasts, because it offers out-of-band (of sorts) remote KVM. This is usually the domain of expensive add-on devices and/or server-grade hardware. However, you probably don’t need that. Provisioning AMT was difficult last I tried.

user219095
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You do not a vPro CPU to run 64-bit Virtual Machines fast and smoothly.

VMware, Hyper-V, Virtual Box, WSL, and docker type software all run on my non-vPro machine.

It is of course up to you if you wish, but from my point of view and a lot of experience, no issue if you do not have a vPro CPU

I can and work a whole day within a fast Virtual Machine and have anything I need on my Windows 11 Host without vPro.