Powerbook for CG?

[hopalongmedia]

Is this just such a retarded question that It's not worth an answer?

[Sieb]

If your just doing simple stuff, it should work fine. I have a 1.2Ghz 15" and it runs FCP just fine, haven't gotten around to trying Maya on it yet. Though it helps if you are already familiar with OSX if you plan on switching to it from Windows.

[colintheys]

My boss has a 17in powerbook at work and i have to say I'm a biy disspointed with it. I was working on a model on one of our workstations and we wanted to present it to someone else so we put it on the laptop and carried it over. Unfortuantely, what we hadn't counted on was something like a 2-second screen refresh rate for a model made entirely out of simple NURBS cylinders. To be fair the system I modeled it on was a dual opteron with a quadrofx 1100 so i've never tried opening the model on a PC laptop. But it was just a hundred or so cylinders....

[hopalongmedia]

Thanks alot. THat is most helpful. Sounds like the Powerbook wouldn't really perform acceptably. I got the word on the Combustion forum that PC is a better format for that too. Oh well, I guess a pretty little powerbook isn't really in my future.

[Saurus]

If you still want mobility that is less heavy than a Sager 9860, try looking for a laptop with an intel mobility chip that has a decent nvidia graphic card with at least 64 or 128 memory. There are a lot out there.

[gooseass]

im not a mac hater by any means, but if speed is any consideration at all do not buy a powerbook... they are sloooooooooow (167mhz bus!!). great machines for design, office stuff, etc, but for heavy lifting they just dont cut it (and are expensive).

[hopalongmedia]

well...I'm sticking with the sager. I appreciate the input. The 9860 is really pretty great. I couldn't ask for more powerwise. I'll have really developed shoulder muscles too...

[BeckyWC]

Sounds great. I have the pavilion zd8080us w/microsoft media center and eventhough it weights 9.4 pounds I take it every where I go. I purchased on ebay a sleeve w/handles that fits my notebook and my 6x8 wacom intous 3 tablet. It is very portable to me.

[splintah]

i ordered a 15" powerbook for maya two days ago

i will post my experiences with it


i have a 1ghz 512 geforce2go notebook
and a dual 3000+ athlon 1gb ECC with quadroFX500 to compare it with

[mojoman]

Hi I'm wondering about using a powerbook 17" w 2gigs RAM for CG stuff. I picked up a Sager 9860 which is fast, but it's heavy, hot and loud. Also no Final Cut Pro.

I just had a weekend nightmare moving drives with premiere and I just don't want to have to be a doing tech stuff if I can help it.

So I'm wondering about doing general MAYA stuff (animated logos, basic character stuff,) Compositing and motion graphics with After Effects and Combustion, and of course Photoshop (I mean big files, 300 dpi lots of layers)

I figure the money I save sending the Sager back could build me a render box to offset what I imagine are slow rendertimes on a powerbook.

Will I be sorry If I go this route?

Any thoughts?

thanks alot,

Dave

This DELL rocks with Maya
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6750309092

[hopalongmedia]

Soo... My saga continues. I'm definitely a generalist so everyone knows. I use my machine for everything from Maya to Combustion to Video Editing to Sound work and LOTS of heavy photoshop. General digital production.

Ok so I sit down the other night to record something with Pro-tools using my M-Box and I couldn't get this "top of the line" "bees-Knees" Sager 9860 to record for more than 30 seconds without having a CPU error. It's a 3.4ghz P4 with 1gig of RAM. My 450 G3 powerbook does Pro-tools fine.

I know this is not an audio forum, I'm just trying to illustrate that this PC notebook is stripping the creative life out of me. I'm having technical problems with every software I use. I guess I'd probably reach a point of equalibrium were I have the bugs worked out for everything, but how many days of work am I going to lose getting there.

I am really gravitating back to the 17 inch G4. I've got till monday to decide. I hope I'm not shooting myself in the foot.

[colintheys]

I wouldn't blame the cpu error on the fact that its a pc. PCs come in many flavors and last time I checked, Sager was not a very good brand. For the price of a 17 inch powerbook, you could get a top-of-the-line IBM.

In my opinion, a Mac is better than a low-end PC, but a high-end PC is better than a mac (and about the same price.) Then again, a lot of it is about which enviornment you feel most comfortable in.

[XYZRGB]

I'm doing 3D and Photoshop work with a 1.6 Ghz Toshiba M200 Tablet PC ( 1 GB ) with no problems.

You should have no problems what-so-ever except wiping the drool off of it from your co-workers.

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