Laptop for graphic design, adobe stuff

Any help on this would be great.

So im gonna be studying graphic design this year, and i need a laptop for adobe apps - photoshop, indesign, illustrator, flash, mainly i presume. I'm guessing that i'll mainly be using the macs in the labs, but i'll want to do some work when i get home aswell.

Things to note:
-a laptop because i'll be studying overseas and i may have to move around abit.
-i've got adobe CS3 suite for windows only (does anyone ever run windows on a mac and use adobe apps on windows?)
-notebook preferably under $2,000
-i may (or may not) be looking for a part-time job thats in an office environment (so i need to use microsoft office which i only have the windows version).

Right now im considering the Dell XPS M1530
http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsnb_m1530?c=nz&cs=nzdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

If graphic design is your next career, I'd hate to bring you bad news, but you will have a harder time as a PC owner. Even though CS files are totally interchangeable and we're in the age of open-type fonts, many jobs are still done with postscript fonts from extensive libraries on macs. So if you ever inherit a file, you gonna have extra setup time and possible problems. You may also occasionally encounter a bit of attitude as people using PCs for graphic design are often regarded as non-professionals who don't really know what they are doing and present bad files (with good reason, historically that is often the case). There is more room for error and headaches and just stupid little things to go wrong if you use a PC then present your files to a lot of printing companies. Also, you may end up preferring OSX for Graphic Design - cynical as all the IT people are with their "get a mac it makes you more creative" comments, with all due respect, they don't work in the industry.
You can run windows on a mac (quite well I hear).
As for CS, you can possibly cross-grade easily. If you didn't actually buy CS then moral/legal implications aside, the mac versions are just as available...

Urgh, design on a laptop, paaain in the ass , but if that's what ya want...

I've owned PCs for near on 15 years now and while i've moved to Mac "you will have a harder time as a PC owner" is absolute bullshit.

I don't think you want to do any reasonable design on a Macbook (the small 13" cheap Mac laptop) so if you're price sensitive and own CS3 for PC already, get a PC.

Get a Dell or HP laptop and install your current version on it.

with all due respect you are not a full-time graphic designer.

Sure, if you just muck around, get a PC. If this is gonna be your full-time job though, then best stick with what the rest of the industry uses imo.

I must say though that as Andrew says, if you are price sensitive, and just starting out, then perhaps a PC will do... Ugh! Except I'd hate to think that would put you in the PC world forever after when you upgrade.

Hopefully in a learning environment it wont really disadvantage you much at all.

OSX running on a mac does have clear benefits for designers.

Interesting. Can you elaborate on this?

He did, in his first post in this thread.

I have done a lot of print recently, and worked with a number of different print designers, none of whom care about mac or PC anymore, they're FAR, FAR more concerned with packaging your file, converting text to outlines, flattening transparencies and outputting the file with the right profile to PDF for press then they are moving files from PC to Mac.

Print shops, and I think Smiley, forget that they have their postscript and RIP systems all set up so the minute they press the button it'll just work, for the majority of freelance and smaller designers out there, every job is different and going to press is way more involved than moving the file between Mac and PC.

Thats all there is to say on the matter IMO, the argument is dead (and i'm not gonna flog it anymore).

Smiley has made a few pretty bad assumptions based on what his impression of "design work" is.

- You'll be doing lots of press work
- You'll be working in a large group of people
- The large group of people will be in an archaic print organisation
- That because of the above, fonts will be your biggest issue

Working in CS3 or 4, you package your work then zip it and there can be no issues. The workflow has really been ironed out. Moreso in CS4. The most annoying problem i've had in the last 2 months has been designers fiddling with files once the transparencies were flattened, and that's a dumbass designer more than anything.

yup, I'll try mostly off the top of my head (so I'll forget stuff I'm sure)
Mostly out of the box stuff, with a bit of effort you can get some of this stuff into windows, so all is not lost. Also I'm assuming your talking print design, not web design.

Native handling of ps and pdf file formats. All dialog boxes allow you to save as pdf, and all OSX applications preview pdfs and ps files. Of course, having acrobat installed on windows goes a long way to solve that.

Easier to use and navigate. Drag and drop still works better and in more situations than in windows. File and folder views are better for organising stuff and little things like being able to colour label files and folders. Expose is just awesome for switching quickly between windows, although you can get 3rd party apps that emulate that behaviour on windows they don't work nearly as quickly or smoothly and you can't drag and drop between windows like you can on OSX. Integration between different apps on OSX seems to be a lot better.

Keyboard shortcuts are more intuitive although new versions of windows are better. Some that I love on the mac are just not available on windows. Keyboard shortcuts are key to being a power user as we know.

Essentially the "more creative with a mac" might actually have a little bit of merit because you can concentrate a lot less on wrestling the OS and more on doing what you do.

Back on the fonts thing, if you get a PC and are required to supply the original files, there is potential for error with fonts and reflow. You could convert the entire document to paths but that reduces print quality and makes the job far less editable. Now you can say "such and such *could* happen, but the chances are small", but from experience I can say the smallest errors picked up after a run of 10,000 or even 100,000 copies, it's not something you want to take your chances with. Shit does happen.

No disk fragmentation.

One OS, not several versions, no 32bit vs 64bit, and macs can address large amounts of memory (assuming you have a mac that can physically take it).

Less tech issues. If you want to concentrate on just doing what you do and not worry about maintenance, in my experience, macs crap out less often. They also don't need to be tweaked (potentially breaking something) just to behave in a way that you want it to (subjective of course, you may like the way windows acts from the box).

There is one thing that bothers me about OSX, and that is I don't think pop up menus can be adjusted with the keyboard only, even if you switch on full control in the system prefs. Kind of annoying if you are experimenting with say for example blending modes in the layers palette in Photoshop.

Colour accuracy is been touted by some people I'm not sure there is anything in that any more, is you are serious about colour management you'll get a collaboration device to profile your display and use adobe's colour management tools.

I'm not a graphic designer, I work in prepress so I'm more on the technical side, and I happily use windows at home, and if I ever do stuff I can predict possible issues. But if I did graphic design for a job full-time I'd get a mac.

But note taken Andrew, it's true that there should be no issues. A decent print house will want a final unflattened pdf file with fonts embedded.

Where I work now, we have good equipment and experienced people. The last place I worked was a different story.

It's just the small things I guess that sound really minor but you discover how often they can crop up and piss you off.

I didn't mean for it to be a mac vs pc argument btw, perhaps if your budget is constrained then by all means get the dell. You can do exactly the same work on the pc, and if that is what you are used to anyway then perhaps it doesn't matter at all.

It's just that once you are in the industry, if you end up collaborating you might wish you had a mac. If you are just a freelance designer and never inherit someone else's work (a client changes designer) and supply correct finished pdf files (which is what you should do anyway) then fine.

Oh also if you do temp work and go through an agency or even some dopey boss, not using a mac may count against you in getting the job. That's just how it is.

btw, I hear fairfax media use PCs.

Do you not actually use acrobat on the mac? I mean he's learning indesign and illustrator, he doesnt have to "print" to PDF out of Quark like crazy people like yourself



Seriously this is all personal preference and you can do everything like that on the PC, particularly if you've used PC already. Seriously the argument there is over.



You always do a digital and press proof, if you dont pick anything like that up you're a rookie



Actually all Smiley-who-tinkers-with-too-much crap



Yup, comes waaaaay more down to your panel + collab now, both support colour profiles. You're going to make more mistakes going from CMYK to process or exporting to JPG than you are with the OS.



'cause you've used it for ages and it works, and it was the industry standard.

Adobe, more than Microsoft, has fixed all of the above.

Then there's office, still the best business tools, and outlook is the single best email client there is, entourage still bugs me even tho 2008 is waaaaaay better than 04

yeah never liked entourage, dunno why it's so different from outlook.

Indeed you are probably correct with the personal preference thing on navigation, I do use both systems as you know, I just find OSX way easier to organise shit. I really miss this view:

in windows in particular.

dude, I haaaaaaaaate quark!! This place has lots of historical files and some munter who thought quark was okay so never converted them
one by one...

Oh yeah heh, I use acrobat all the time, just sometimes it's really handy to make a lores pdf straight from the print dialog

the bit that got me was fragmentation. i haven't defragged a disk in like a fucking decade! people still do that?

Occasionally... But the thing is the file system doesn't fragment in the same way that windows does. I'd have thought that if it gets badly fragmented it would be a performance issue?

no geek that i know has bothered in about the same about of time. modern drives are fast enough for it not to matter.

I kinda skimmed past the defrag thing and giggled, no smiley, it doesnt matter, much like the rest of the stuff, and the computer you get for the money is going to be way quicker anyway.

What REALLY gets me is that back when defragging was a problem, PCs were WAY quicker than Macs. WAY quicker! Notice the speed of macs went up 30% when they switched to Intel? (which is when I started looking at them), thats the speed difference PC users were enjoying before that point. Now both are on par.

Thanks Smiley and Andrew for writing so much...even though i didnt understand most of the latter stuff you were talking about.

Im not looking to be a full-time graphic designer. Im just doing a 1 year diploma in graphic design and digital media to get some more skills to use in my job. (Basically im still abit confused as to what i wanna do in life...but i'll save that for another thread one day). Doing it offshore, so no student allowance and therefore price sensitive.

I was thinking i might consider getting a MBP at the end of the year if i realise i need it. Regarding the software i got, erm its a special version i picked up in Asia...

Apart from Dell,,..HP and Asus also looked good. If i dont see anything interesting in JBhifi today, im gonna order the Dell tonight.

Ok Question if anyone can help:
For a 15.4" screen would you reccomend going for a 1440x900 or a 1680x1050 screen ($95 more).
Im leaning towards 1680x1050 and then adjusting the font size so the text isnt so small on the screen, any probs with doing that?

Also:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor T8100 (2.1 GHz, 3MB Cache, 800 MHz FSB)
or
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor T8300 (2.4 GHz, 3MB Cache, 800 MHz FSB) [$122.62 more]
I doubt the T8300 would make much of a difference.

With design applications, the more screen area available the better. Spend the extra $95.

Ok cool, thanks. I think i've got the config i want know.
Saw JBhifi today and they didnt have anything more than bond&bond, dicksmith, harvey norman.
Im gonna get the dell. I just wish i could've seen it in real life first before going to order it...oh well should be fine.