S'all good. I understand where your comming from. Some people know cars, other know computers, etc. So after reading you guys I have a few things to say/ask:
1) I will be getting a laptop from my parents for college. My limit is more than likely ~$1K, maybe more if I can use some of my own money. I will be going to school for photojournalism.
1B)This means I'd more than likely have to get a premade computer.
2) I like the OS of an Apple because of how smooth and easy it is, plus a lot of the keyboard shortcuts there are.
3) I've had really bad experience with Dell.
4) I'd like something with a lot of RAM, I think. I'm a big multitasker and lots of RAM is good for this reason, correct?
What would you guys recommend to get?
Sounds like you're getting a MacBook, to me.
Keep in mind that you can buy through the educational store. You get about $100 off normal retail when you buy educational. Also, each late summer/fall they generally give you a free ipod in the deal, too, for their "back to school" sale.
Don't buy your RAM from Apple, get it from crucial.com or newegg. You can put up to 4GB in it.
I would upgrade the hard drive. You can have Apple do that, or save about 40% and DIY with a drive from a place like Other World Computing.
When I switched from PC to Mac it was because of the Deal that the U of M gave through the Mac Store. A year ago we could get a free printer plus $100 off if we went mac and my PC was out of date. I had wanted a Mac for a while because of the OS it really is great. I do love PCs, but OSX is rock solid
The cost of the machine is why they are not popular for home computers in Australia. I needed to drop a lot on a new monitor & thought i may as well update the whole computer & try a mac.
When i say cost...this mac im on was $3k & the equiv PC is maybe $2k with the new monitor. For a family with several billy lids & a mortgage , that $1k is a lot.
Right. While in some cases Macs come in at roughly the same cost as equivalent PCs, it is more common to find they are more expensive. For my own requirements, the difference was substantial. I posted the gory details here.
I can certainly see why RS .. nik & the likes would stick with PC though as the everyday problems that i faced on a PC would be nothing for them to sort out.
Yeah, I can deal with Windows. But it is also true that if I had more money than I do, I would have bought a Mac.
A agree with whomever said, "Get the Mac and run Windows on it as well". In other words, wouldn't you rather have a Nikon to compliment all your Canon gear? One can run Aperture. The other can run Picasa. Why choose?
Running Windows at full speed on a Mac is a reality. I find I rarely go into Windows, but it's there if there's something I absolutely need. Several people I work with have Macs on which they run Windows because they're very fast and run everything you could want—even Linux.
I don't fuss about the cost because the total cost of ownership, for the past 15 years for me, has been that of high, high value. There's none of the cack you get installed with Windows to deal with, for example. My Macs continue to earn me rent income and my job is performed on them.
I'm not about to jump into all the details, but I did want to make one mention that hasn't really been addressed. If you want to play the latest games that come out you would most likely want a PC with Windows. Even if the game doesn't require the fastest graphics cards, most developers develope for Windows first, and then months or years later if the game sold well enough they will make a port for MAC.
One good example of this is the latest Sam & Max games. Not very graphics intensive, but you can't play them on Mac. One option would be dual booting Windows on a MAC, as someone previously mentioned.
The video cards are different, and I don't know enough about those to know who's favor that would work in,
The NVidia Quadro is a much higher end graphics card than the Gforce 8800 it was compared to, and there's not much use for the dual option on it unless you're using it for a very limited set of uses, like gaming. The Quadro cards are intended for Visualization, CAD, DSS... lots of pixels that need to be accurately modeled, but not moving all that fast. The Gforce cards are intended for gaming... a small number of pixels that need to move really fast, and if they're sligtly less accurate, oh well. (Or if you'd rather look at it from a 3d objects perspective, the Quadro cards have a lot of vertexes that stay in frame, whereas the Gforce cards have a lot of vertexes coming and going as you roam the game. At least for their intended markets.) The Quadro can do the gaming that the gforce can do, but the gforce can not do the visualization that the quadro can.
That skewed the price a bit. That particular Quadro card I can't find in the wild as an individual part, but the model one below it costs ~$2,400. The dual gforce cards should be able to be had for around ~$1,300.
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
The NVidia Quadro is a much higher end graphics card than the Gforce 8800 it was compared to, and there's not much use for the dual option on it unless you're using it for a very limited set of uses, like gaming. The Quadro cards are intended for Visualization, CAD, DSS... lots of pixels that need to be accurately modeled, but not moving all that fast. The Gforce cards are intended for gaming... a small number of pixels that need to move really fast, and if they're sligtly less accurate, oh well. (Or if you'd rather look at it from a 3d objects perspective, the Quadro cards have a lot of vertexes that stay in frame, whereas the Gforce cards have a lot of vertexes coming and going as you roam the game. At least for their intended markets.) The Quadro can do the gaming that the gforce can do, but the gforce can not do the visualization that the quadro can.
That skewed the price a bit. That particular Quadro card I can't find in the wild as an individual part, but the model one below it costs ~$2,400. The dual gforce cards should be able to be had for around ~$1,300.
So, if I'm following this, you're saying that it makes the Mac even cheaper in respect to the Dell? Or that it's too much apples/oranges to compare?
So, if I'm following this, you're saying that it makes the Mac even cheaper in respect to the Dell? Or that it's too much apples/oranges to compare?
Yes and yes, at least for that component. I'd almost say it's on par with comparing an 8 way against a 4 way.
I tried to find a better comparison between a mac pro and a dell... even venturing into dell's workstation class machines I can't find anything with the computing power of the dual quad core macpro. Nor in the server arena where they have dual quad, and quad dual, but all with the older Xeon technology... nothing with Core 2. And since Apple doesn't have uni sockets anymore... it's very hard to make an apples to apples comparison of the two product lines at the workstation (aka macpro) level.
I hoped Dell's new competitor to the iMac would have comparable processors, but the closest I could get was 2.33 Ghz Core 2 Duo from Dell vs 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo from Apple, both in 20". I priced them out as close as I could: apple $2167, dell $2117. Note that I added Apperture 1.5 pre-installed to balance out the adobe suite that came with the dell, that I couldn't deselect. That's probably overkill, as were a few other aspects of the Apple... so for $50 more the apple has a slightly faster cpu, a slightly beefier graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400) ; the dell has a faster optical drive (16x vs 8x), an integrated tv tuner (with remote) and an 8-in-1 media reader. Oh, and there's a slightly different mix of pre-loaded software.
I should note, both of those were retail web prices... there are of course all sorts of offers on both sides that would reduce that price; and I wouldn't consider either of them "dream systems"... just as close as I could reasonable make the comparison on the websites with a few minutes while the baby wasn't screaming.
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
The quadro targets a very narrow market though. It seems that overall users would reap greater benefits from something along the lines of a GF 8 series since the average computer user doesn't render pixel perfect 3d graphics. After all, slightly less accurate rendering proves to give much faster times.
I'm wondering what the percentage of user is that would really utilize the rendering that the quadro boasts of?
Am I missing something else about the quadro? I'm not heavy on graphics cards but the info provided seems pretty straight forward.
The issue right now, I believe, is that there isn't a version of the 8800 series that is compatible with the MacOS. So for gaming it is either one of the 7000 series cards, which for many of the newest games just isn't fast enough, or one of the Quadra cards.
I could be wrong on this, this is based on some very cursory research!
Dude, whatever you do you will be fine. Just make sure that you get an adequate amount of RAM. As a student I find that at the end of the day I have 1324 applications running,or 1134 windows in safari.
If you get a mac laptop get at least 2gb, with two 1gb matches sticks, to run comfortably
If you will run Windows Vista on a comparable laptop I would get 4, with both RAM sticks matched. That will run Vista comfortably on your laptop
I used to have 1 on my mac and osx leopard. I switched them out for 2 gb and it runs like a champ
Dude, whatever you do you will be fine. Just make sure that you get an adequate amount of RAM. As a student I find that at the end of the day I have 1324 applications running,or 1134 windows in safari.
If you get a mac laptop get at least 2gb, with two 1gb matches sticks, to run comfortably
If you will run Windows Vista on a comparable laptop I would get 4, with both RAM sticks matched. That will run Vista comfortably on your laptop
I used to have 1 on my mac and osx leopard. I switched them out for 2 gb and it runs like a champ
The issue right now, I believe, is that there isn't a version of the 8800 series that is compatible with the MacOS. So for gaming it is either one of the 7000 series cards, which for many of the newest games just isn't fast enough, or one of the Quadra cards.
I could be wrong on this, this is based on some very cursory research!
Correct, though the expectation is that the next rev of the MacPro will include 8600 and/or 8800 based cards to replace the 7xxx cards. that could be as soon as MacWorld in January... or as far out as never....
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
So...
For best quality and what I could try and afford, I want to look for:
-2gb of ram (seperated into 2 sticks of 1gb each) or more if I can
-a video card that emphasizes quality over speed b/c I'm not much of a PC gamer
-a big memory
-an apple because I like the OS
For best quality and what I could try and afford, I want to look for:
-2gb of ram (seperated into 2 sticks of 1gb each) or more if I can
-a video card that emphasizes quality over speed b/c I'm not much of a PC gamer
-a big memory
-an apple because I like the OS
Is there anything I missed?
Given your budget and the fact that you want a laptop, you'd be getting a MacBook. From there you can decide which one. Yes, add ram from crucial.com, and get the biggest drive you can afford, although you can upgrade it yourself as I linked above.
If I buy something from crucial.com wouldn't I need to install it myself? >_>
And actually, the more that I think about it would it make more sense to go with a PC (to save money) and get the apps that have some of the some effects of the big apple stuff, and use the extramoney on ram and memory?
edit - Oh, and should I look for something with a dual core?
If I buy something from crucial.com wouldn't I need to install it myself? >_>
And actually, the more that I think about it would it make more sense to go with a PC (to save money) and get the apps that have some of the some effects of the big apple stuff, and use the extramoney on ram and memory?
edit - Oh, and should I look for something with a dual core?
Yes, but RAM is exceedingly easy to install.
You have to decide re: PC. If you think you can buy apps that will give you the Apple experience on a PC, you're mistaken. All Macs are Core 2 Duo or better.
I have both Apple/Mac OS and Windows XP Pro at home. I do use Boot Camp and VMware Fusion to run Windows applications on my MacBook Pro. The applications I run are stuff like Star*Explorer and other programs that just ain't available on Mac.
I have Adobe Creative Suite 3 for work on Windows (Lenovo) Laptop. It have a personal copy of Adobe Create Suite for Mac. Very similiar specs in terms of processor speed and amount of RAM. It runs faster on the Mac. Same thing for Lightroom. Is it perfect, nope. But I can get by through using Boot Camp and VMware. No single thing will be the perfect solution... but I have had more flexibility with the Mac. But I have had to work at it.
IF I was to do it again, I would look very hard at a Windows XP Pro based machine. The biggest thing I would say is to wait and see what environment you will be entering into at school. If everything is Windows based it might be easier to go with that for ease of transport and file usage. Yes, it is pretty good to do the transfers but there are those little idiosyncrasies.
Ultimately though it comes down to what you feel comfortable and happy with.
You have to decide re: PC. If you think you can buy apps that will give you the Apple experience on a PC, you're mistaken. All Macs are Core 2 Duo or better.
I never said buying. There are sites that offer downloads of programs that do stuff like a Mac, like the program bar on a mac, or pressing f10(?) and bringing all the windows to display.
Also, I've yet to have a bad experience with a Mac. PCs on the other hand... A few programs to coime to mind that would be nice to have such as Garageband and since I'm going to school for photojournalism I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of other people with macs. I'm also heavily involved in all sorts of music, hence GB.
The biggest thing I would say is to wait and see what environment you will be entering into at school. If everything is Windows based it might be easier to go with that for ease of transport and file usage. Yes, it is pretty good to do the transfers but there are those little idiosyncrasies.
Brad makes an excellent point here. You will have a much easier time finding software and getting support if your machine conforms to the standard of your school. You can probably find that out in advance.
You always get more bang for your buck from Desktops than laptops. I also think the miniaturization takes a toll on th workng life of the machine as well, although I have no data to back that up, it is a feeling. In the last 6 years I had 1 desktop PC and about 3 laptops. Thena gain, I travel 35 weeks a year, so they take a beating.
As far as portability goes, it is a stretch, but the iac is actually pretty portable. During the summers, when I want to use it for music for my backyard parties, I just unpluge two cables, (the power cord and the ethernet) which are easily accesible, walk it outside, and plug it back in. This takes about 2 minutes.
Granted, you can't walk around with the thing, or carry it easily onto airplanes.
I switched from PC's (which I used since the late 80s) to ac about 8 months ago. I am running an Imac with 2g of ram. Today, I think this would cost in the neighborhood of $1500.
Some of the other guys are talking about superstapped machines that you can use to create Titanic CGI. I don't need to do that, so I don't have to spend that level of cash.
I'm totally happy with the switch, and here is why.
When I turn my computer on, it only takes 120 seconds, and it stays on. I may be a "low end" user, but I like the fact that when I plug a device in, it just... works.
I like the fact that the machine is elegant, and I can put it in the middle of my living room. It doesn't look like the bastard child of ENIAC.
If someone carries his iMac to class and sets it up a row in front of me so I can't see the professor, heck YES I'm gonna be pissed
Portability really is the domain of laptops. Oh and they have this thing called a battery, which helps you use them when you're not within 6 feet of a wall outlet
Comments
Sounds like you're getting a MacBook, to me.
Keep in mind that you can buy through the educational store. You get about $100 off normal retail when you buy educational. Also, each late summer/fall they generally give you a free ipod in the deal, too, for their "back to school" sale.
Don't buy your RAM from Apple, get it from crucial.com or newegg. You can put up to 4GB in it.
I would upgrade the hard drive. You can have Apple do that, or save about 40% and DIY with a drive from a place like Other World Computing.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Running Windows at full speed on a Mac is a reality. I find I rarely go into Windows, but it's there if there's something I absolutely need. Several people I work with have Macs on which they run Windows because they're very fast and run everything you could want—even Linux.
I don't fuss about the cost because the total cost of ownership, for the past 15 years for me, has been that of high, high value. There's none of the cack you get installed with Windows to deal with, for example. My Macs continue to earn me rent income and my job is performed on them.
One good example of this is the latest Sam & Max games. Not very graphics intensive, but you can't play them on Mac. One option would be dual booting Windows on a MAC, as someone previously mentioned.
Just my 2 cents...
The purpose of this thread is for a college student that has a roof of 1K though.
The NVidia Quadro is a much higher end graphics card than the Gforce 8800 it was compared to, and there's not much use for the dual option on it unless you're using it for a very limited set of uses, like gaming. The Quadro cards are intended for Visualization, CAD, DSS... lots of pixels that need to be accurately modeled, but not moving all that fast. The Gforce cards are intended for gaming... a small number of pixels that need to move really fast, and if they're sligtly less accurate, oh well. (Or if you'd rather look at it from a 3d objects perspective, the Quadro cards have a lot of vertexes that stay in frame, whereas the Gforce cards have a lot of vertexes coming and going as you roam the game. At least for their intended markets.) The Quadro can do the gaming that the gforce can do, but the gforce can not do the visualization that the quadro can.
That skewed the price a bit. That particular Quadro card I can't find in the wild as an individual part, but the model one below it costs ~$2,400. The dual gforce cards should be able to be had for around ~$1,300.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
So, if I'm following this, you're saying that it makes the Mac even cheaper in respect to the Dell? Or that it's too much apples/oranges to compare?
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Yes and yes, at least for that component. I'd almost say it's on par with comparing an 8 way against a 4 way.
I tried to find a better comparison between a mac pro and a dell... even venturing into dell's workstation class machines I can't find anything with the computing power of the dual quad core macpro. Nor in the server arena where they have dual quad, and quad dual, but all with the older Xeon technology... nothing with Core 2. And since Apple doesn't have uni sockets anymore... it's very hard to make an apples to apples comparison of the two product lines at the workstation (aka macpro) level.
I hoped Dell's new competitor to the iMac would have comparable processors, but the closest I could get was 2.33 Ghz Core 2 Duo from Dell vs 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo from Apple, both in 20". I priced them out as close as I could: apple $2167, dell $2117. Note that I added Apperture 1.5 pre-installed to balance out the adobe suite that came with the dell, that I couldn't deselect. That's probably overkill, as were a few other aspects of the Apple... so for $50 more the apple has a slightly faster cpu, a slightly beefier graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400) ; the dell has a faster optical drive (16x vs 8x), an integrated tv tuner (with remote) and an 8-in-1 media reader. Oh, and there's a slightly different mix of pre-loaded software.
I should note, both of those were retail web prices... there are of course all sorts of offers on both sides that would reduce that price; and I wouldn't consider either of them "dream systems"... just as close as I could reasonable make the comparison on the websites with a few minutes while the baby wasn't screaming.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
I'm wondering what the percentage of user is that would really utilize the rendering that the quadro boasts of?
Am I missing something else about the quadro? I'm not heavy on graphics cards but the info provided seems pretty straight forward.
I could be wrong on this, this is based on some very cursory research!
If you get a mac laptop get at least 2gb, with two 1gb matches sticks, to run comfortably
If you will run Windows Vista on a comparable laptop I would get 4, with both RAM sticks matched. That will run Vista comfortably on your laptop
I used to have 1 on my mac and osx leopard. I switched them out for 2 gb and it runs like a champ
Correct, though the expectation is that the next rev of the MacPro will include 8600 and/or 8800 based cards to replace the 7xxx cards. that could be as soon as MacWorld in January... or as far out as never....
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
For best quality and what I could try and afford, I want to look for:
-2gb of ram (seperated into 2 sticks of 1gb each) or more if I can
-a video card that emphasizes quality over speed b/c I'm not much of a PC gamer
-a big memory
-an apple because I like the OS
Is there anything I missed?
Canon 40D
Canon EF-S 17-85 IS
http://www.flickr.com/trevaftw
Given your budget and the fact that you want a laptop, you'd be getting a MacBook. From there you can decide which one. Yes, add ram from crucial.com, and get the biggest drive you can afford, although you can upgrade it yourself as I linked above.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
And actually, the more that I think about it would it make more sense to go with a PC (to save money) and get the apps that have some of the some effects of the big apple stuff, and use the extramoney on ram and memory?
edit - Oh, and should I look for something with a dual core?
Canon 40D
Canon EF-S 17-85 IS
http://www.flickr.com/trevaftw
Yes, but RAM is exceedingly easy to install.
You have to decide re: PC. If you think you can buy apps that will give you the Apple experience on a PC, you're mistaken. All Macs are Core 2 Duo or better.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
I have both Apple/Mac OS and Windows XP Pro at home. I do use Boot Camp and VMware Fusion to run Windows applications on my MacBook Pro. The applications I run are stuff like Star*Explorer and other programs that just ain't available on Mac.
I have Adobe Creative Suite 3 for work on Windows (Lenovo) Laptop. It have a personal copy of Adobe Create Suite for Mac. Very similiar specs in terms of processor speed and amount of RAM. It runs faster on the Mac. Same thing for Lightroom. Is it perfect, nope. But I can get by through using Boot Camp and VMware. No single thing will be the perfect solution... but I have had more flexibility with the Mac. But I have had to work at it.
IF I was to do it again, I would look very hard at a Windows XP Pro based machine. The biggest thing I would say is to wait and see what environment you will be entering into at school. If everything is Windows based it might be easier to go with that for ease of transport and file usage. Yes, it is pretty good to do the transfers but there are those little idiosyncrasies.
Ultimately though it comes down to what you feel comfortable and happy with.
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Different than the PC experience. The experience is mostly in the OS, I think. They're different, that's all.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
I never said buying. There are sites that offer downloads of programs that do stuff like a Mac, like the program bar on a mac, or pressing f10(?) and bringing all the windows to display.
Also, I've yet to have a bad experience with a Mac. PCs on the other hand... A few programs to coime to mind that would be nice to have such as Garageband and since I'm going to school for photojournalism I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of other people with macs. I'm also heavily involved in all sorts of music, hence GB.
Canon 40D
Canon EF-S 17-85 IS
http://www.flickr.com/trevaftw
I wouldn't worry about it, myself.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
lol
Mac OS 10.5
Glass: Sigma 70-200 f2.8 | Sigma 20 f1.8 | Canon 28-135 f3.5-5.6 IS USM
And note Ducky, that was from a lecture hall at the Missouri School of Journalism.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Brad makes an excellent point here. You will have a much easier time finding software and getting support if your machine conforms to the standard of your school. You can probably find that out in advance.
You always get more bang for your buck from Desktops than laptops. I also think the miniaturization takes a toll on th workng life of the machine as well, although I have no data to back that up, it is a feeling. In the last 6 years I had 1 desktop PC and about 3 laptops. Thena gain, I travel 35 weeks a year, so they take a beating.
As far as portability goes, it is a stretch, but the iac is actually pretty portable. During the summers, when I want to use it for music for my backyard parties, I just unpluge two cables, (the power cord and the ethernet) which are easily accesible, walk it outside, and plug it back in. This takes about 2 minutes.
Granted, you can't walk around with the thing, or carry it easily onto airplanes.
I switched from PC's (which I used since the late 80s) to ac about 8 months ago. I am running an Imac with 2g of ram. Today, I think this would cost in the neighborhood of $1500.
Some of the other guys are talking about superstapped machines that you can use to create Titanic CGI. I don't need to do that, so I don't have to spend that level of cash.
I'm totally happy with the switch, and here is why.
When I turn my computer on, it only takes 120 seconds, and it stays on. I may be a "low end" user, but I like the fact that when I plug a device in, it just... works.
I like the fact that the machine is elegant, and I can put it in the middle of my living room. It doesn't look like the bastard child of ENIAC.
Portability really is the domain of laptops. Oh and they have this thing called a battery, which helps you use them when you're not within 6 feet of a wall outlet