I’ve always been a desktop guy. I have owned laptops but for some reason, I was always rather grounded to my desk. That is until recently… I went away on a trip and I had our back up laptop with me for work and well… it was sloooow. Bryci has her kick ass Macbook pro and I was using the laptop we use for B’s cam show broadcasts… so it’s your every day $500 dollar range laptop, nothing crazy.
On my desk right now as I type this, I have a collection of geek happiness that is here to make my job easier, my life easier I suppose. I am always interested in what other people use for their systems, what their desktops look like etc. I remember coming across blogs and sites where guys would post their set ups and sometimes it gave me new ideas foe the direction I wanted to move in, or at the very least, stuff to look at. With that said… I’ll try and better illustrate the whole desktop v laptop dilemma.
(Mac on left, Win7 on right, both with apple extended keyboards and Logitech G9 mice)
On my left, I have my Apple Mac Pro (8 core (2.8 GHz), 10 gig ram, 4 tb of storage + 2 tb of scratch storage for HD video encoding). On my right, I have my windows 7 machine. It’s comprised of Intel i7 920 quad core (2.67Mhz). 6 gigs of ram, and 3 tb of storage and 1 tb of scratch space for Photoshop etc.
(drives sit in waiting for me to fill them with goodness)
Both machines have their own Apple 30+ screens for large desktop space, easier to work with etc. Both rock 2560 x 1600 screen resolution @ .25 dpi which is awesome for graphic work/hd video editing. I use the Win7 machine prob 90% of the day, the Mac is used for video editing almost entirely.
(i7 box on left and Mac Pro on right with Jack in the background sleeping)
It’s not that I think Win7 is better than OS-X, truth is I think OS-X is *much* stronger, I just am more used to Win over OS-X and most of my software is Win based. I used to have bootcamp on the Apple and I stayed in Win7 more than OS-X, then I realized if I grabbed a second system I could streamline, become quicker. System A is video encoding while system B is doing other tasks… it did speed me up, so that’s good.
So with that all said and done… now I am sitting here typing this pondering the future of my video editing tasks. I have more or less decided when Apple released their new Mac Book Pro in the next month or two… I’ll look at getting one of those, and sell my current Mac Pro. Reason is simple… the laptop can replace the desktop unit, still power the 30” screen and do everything I currently do and as an added bonus… I have mobility which I’d like.
A good deal of people I know live on their laptops, swear by them. I figure… buy the laptop, sell the desktop, pay the debt down from that and after all is said and done, I walked away with a new laptop for a fraction of the price. The new Apple MBP is said to have the i5 and i7 chips in them once released, so we’ll see I guess.
(not my laptop.. but it is the skin I just snagged)
I saw this skin for the 17” MBP laptop that made me drool so I bought one. I am such a geek. heh I don’t even have the laptop yet, so why did I grab a skin? Well, honestly… the last time I saw a cool skin they sold out quick and the movie company clamped down on the company making them so there was no second run. I didn’t want to lose this sucker, so I figured… $15 investment. If it turns out I don’t go that direction and get the new MBP… i can always sell the skin on eBay or something. meh
So that’s the dilemma in a nutshell. To lap or not to lap. I wanted my own Macbook for the longest time so I can continue writing with it, so this moves me one step closer to realizing a life time goal as well. Yes, I’m writing something… more on that down the road
February 4th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
When I do get this… if I get the MBP that is, I’ll end up bootcamping it with Win7 so I have the best of both worlds.
February 4th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
My Dell XPS M1730 does everything i ask it to do so no need to go back to desktop.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Dell makes great laptop too, the XPS series is amazing. Good choice man!
February 4th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
i like my i7 HP quad core, 8 gig ram, 24 inch HD hp screen set up that i have…tho im going to be looking at getting a mac set up like yours currently, in my future…so when/if you do decide to sell yours, let me know, i may grab it up from you.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:22 pm
You got it Shaun. If I do sell it to you, you know it’ll be a sweet deal, I’ll even leave shit installed. Wait, I didn’t say that. :p
February 5th, 2010 at 2:08 am
sounds good to me bro.