hellziggy | OK all you Mac users...

I need advice.
Apple will finance a computer for me, cuz I is a college student.
What kind of Mac should I get/do I need?
G5 desktop = way more powerful for the money.
Powerbook = portable & cool.

I am studying Graphic Design. It's a 2 year program, but I'm gonna take a bit longer than that since I'm only part time. I would assume that whatever Mac I get will be with me until I finish school at least. I'm leaning toward the Powerbook for the sheer portability issue. I would be able to do my homework pretty much anywhere. Also, it would have the wireless internet connection. But will it be powerful enough to deal with Photoshop, Illustrater, Quark, etc.? Or will these things require me to go desktop? Remember, I'm just a student, so I won't be doing massive amounts of designs like for customers or such. It will mainly be homework assignments.

minervacat, what are Wes's stats? What do you like & dislike about him?

chebutykin, same questions for the TiBook of the Dead.
I'm feeling so computer illiterate. These Macs are strange creatures indeed!

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Yay for Macs!!!

I do a lot of design work on my Mac; I regularly have 18 programs open, including Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator and Acrobat, not to mention my font program and Word and my browser and my e-mail client and my LJ client and my TV show program andandand.

My Mac is ... uh, three years old. It's a dual-533 MHz G4 tower, and currently has something like 448 megs of ram and a million gigs of hard drive space. (I mod it all the time.)

So. A powerbook, especially since they just upgraded them, will be plenty of power to run your programs. It won't be as fast, but it will be able to handle everything.

However. I've found, doing design stuff, that I need to have a pretty big desktop area to work with. A giant monitor is a must for me, which is the big advantage to going desktop. Unless you've already got a giant monitor and can hook it up to your laptop as an external, in which case you should be fine.

The other issue with doing design work on a laptop is that the cursor is more difficult to control. You can, of course, hook up a mouse or trackball, but pretty soon you're lugging around 18 peripherals and it's a pain in the ass.

Oh! The other advantage to going desktop is that it's more moddable. You can add RAM to a laptop, but that's about it.

Wes is a 12" iBook with 256 MB of RAM, a 900 mHrz processor and a 60 GB harddrive. He's not as souped up as iBooks can be (I have nowhere near the top end amount of RAM you can put in, and I think you can put 120GB harddrives in iBooks), and with the price cut from this summer still in effect, you could buy a computer like Wes for about 1200 bucks, before the student discounts.

On the other hand, I don't do a lot of graphic design and when I run PhotoShop, it tends to slow Wes down a little bit. It's the only time I ever see lag in my system. So as long as you're getting student prices, you might want to check out the new PowerBooks - they just released the 1.25 gHrz processor yesterday, and one of those with 400 or so MG of RAM would be plenty fast for your purposes.

There is really nothing I dislike about Wes, except that if I was going to be doing more graphic design than I am - like you - I would want a mouse beyond the trackpad and some more RAM. Actually, you could probably just put more RAM than I have into an iBook and you'd be fine. But really? No problems at all. Wes is portable and light, OS X is really stable, and other than breaking the screen, I haven't had any problems with him at all.

well, you can do more than change RAM... Well I can, I'm a trained professional you shouldn't try. Changing out the hardrive is a chore. I'd look at the new powerbooks they look tasty.

Cool. Thanks for the info. The main thing I was worried about was if it would be fast enough/big enough. I just ordered it last night & I'll have a 1.25GHz G4, 60GB hard drive, and a 40GB ipod (which I am pretty sure

hellbob will be comandeering for his music) I figure that if I really need access to a desktop for something specific, there are 60 macs on campust that only Graphic Design students can use, in addition to all the open mac labs.

Thanks! Poor Wes. Does he get photoshop envy? ;P
I decided that PowerBook was definitely the way for me to go. Now I just have to wait for it to get here.

OK all you Mac users...

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