My wife has started back in college after many many years to finish her degree in Interior Architecture. For this past Christmas I bought her a new $1300 HP Envy laptop that the sales person at Best Buy assured me will meet all her needs in the graphics department. She said it was the best non Alienware laptop they had when it came to performance. 6 months later and all hear about is SketchUp is so slow and keeps crashing and it is taking her forever to do her projects for class. I have been reading up on getting an external GPU but with so many choices I dont know what would be best for what we need. We do not game on our PC's, so we do not need a Super Hell Fire Hawk Tuah 8000. Just something we know will perform what she needs and won't break the bank. I checked the ports, we do have the lightening ports so hopeful this can be a painless upgrade for us. Any advice? I