New Laptop

[Trevor Tizard]

Hi All,

 

In the market for a new laptop for my main production machine. I intend keeping my current PC as a render slave, and run AutoCAD, Viz2008 and Photoshop (After Effects soon).My questions are:

 

1. Is a Macbook Pro with windows under bootcamp still the way forward or are they now just expensive PC's.

 

2. Can I run my two monitors from the laptop or only one.

 

3. Would you run Photoshop and After Effects under Mac OS and just keep the AutoDesk stuff on Windows, as I assume PS and AE could take advantage of more ram that way.

 

Any advice or things I've not considered would be much appreciated.

 

Trev

[vizfx]

Hi

Try the new Alienware Area 51 m15x - hard to beat configurations.

http://www.alienware.com/product_pages/notebook_m15x.aspx?source=ECH0026

Best regards.

Mihai

[oluv]

the macbook pro has a too low screen resolution, the gfx-card is not fast enough, and all in all it is too expensive. for 15" i would take 1680x1050, and for 17" 1920x1200. otherwise you won't have enough space for acad, 3ds max viewports etc.

 

i also would take a look at the new alienware notebooks like vizfx mentioned. the upcoming 17x could be even more interesting. with up to 3 hard-drives (with raid), two nvidia 8800gtx in sli etc. it is not cheap either but you will certainly have a nice work-station.

 

i have been using a dell inspiron xps1710 for 6 months now and i am very satisfied with it. i have a core2duo overclocked to 2,8ghz, an nvida 7950gtx, 4gb ram and a 200gb 7200rpm harddrive. it is not on the light side, as it weights 3,9kg, but it is still nicely portable and i can work for 3 hours with this beast on one charge. many other desktop replacement laptops do hardly 2 hours. by the way the dell-screen is really great. it is hell of bright, not like many other displays i have seen.

 

another option would be a notebook from sager like the NP9262. you even have the option for a quadcore cpu, but don't expect this to last longer than half an hour on one charge, so it is really a desktop replacement and weights over 5kg (probably 7 including the ac-adapter)

 

regarding 2 monitors, there is hardly an option. you can only use the internal notebook display and one external one, as all notebooks i know have only one external video-out. of course they have vga and dvi, but i don't know of any which can output on both simultanously.

 

i also thought about a mac, but rather would take the new mac pro with 8 cores to extend my notebook

[AJLynn]

The Alienware notebooks are ridiculous. They're the least portable thing you can still market as a "notebook". Get one if you plan to do heavy 3D work using only the notebook, as a replacement for a desktop, and I'm serious when I say "heavy". They're made for the kind of people who think taking a desktop computer to a party is a good idea, but don't want to deal with carrying all those separate pieces up from their parents' basements so the "desktop-replacement" "notebook" is a reasonable compromise.

 

If you have that kind of money, the Macbook Pro is very hard to beat for how well designed, powerful and portable it is. And it does come in a 17" 1920x1200 configuration if you enjoy squinting.

 

If you don't want to spend that, look for notebooks from a reputable company with a good Core 2 Duo CPU and a "real" video card - one with at least 128MB of dedicated memory that is not "Hypermemory" of "Turbocache" - both of which sound fast but aren't, or if it has one of these it should also have a lot of real dedicated memory.

 

My Macbook Pro is old, it's a Core (not Core 2) Duo 2.16 with an ATI x1600, and it's still good enough for most of my tasks - I've only ever done a couple of models I wouldn't use it for. A lot of notebooks these days are more powerful than that without being at all tanklike.

 

A laptop with a DVI port and a good video card can run 2 monitors. Just yesterday I had the laptop spitting out video at 1920x1200 to my SXRD TV, while multitasking, no problem.

[Trevor Tizard]

Thanks Andrew,

 

Priced an HP and MacPro was cheaper by nearly 20%. Back on the monitor issue, would I be able to continue using my TWO 19" monitors, or just one with the MacPro screen (sorry if that's what you meant).

 

Also do you run all your software on Windows or do you run PS on mac OS?

 

Thanks

[AJLynn]

Oh, two more monitors. Hmmm. There are DVI splitters but they're for mirroring monitors. I can't think of any notebooks with 2 DVI ports. There are products out there that are like docking stations, but connect via a USB port, and have a monitor connection - like the one mentioned in this post but they're probably not good enough to do 3D work on.

 

Now if you've looked at an HP and a Mac, with similar specs, and the Mac is cheaper, that's a no brainer - get the Mac. It's the superior computer.

 

BTW I don't run Windows at all on the Mac anymore.

[Craig Ramsay]

I posted this on the chaos forum but I'll post here too if you didn't see it:

 

 

If you're interested I may be selling my Rock CTX Pro laptop. It's a great machine and cost me an absolute fortune but unfortunately I just don't use it very often. Here's the spec:

 

17" X-Glass High resolution screen

Core 2 Duo T7600

Nvidia Quadro FX 2500M graphics card

2GB RAM

 

Fire me a PM if interested.

 

PS I'm based in Scotland.