My wife and I are moving to Europe in about a month. She's a Mechanical Design Engineer working for a firm which produces plastic products for many different retail firms. She works mainly with Autocad and Solidworks for Windows. She also works quite often with Photoshop and Illustrator.
Since we're a Mac only household, the task is now relegated to me to come up with a computer that fits the bill. We would prefer to take my MacPro with us, but that's just not possible at this time, since we won't be shipping a container to Europe. We're not too interested in laptops; though taking them with us on the airplane would be simple, I don't feel that we need the higher cost of the laptop screen, trackpad and keyboard that won't be used with her CAD software. She'll need a bigger monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard with number pad. We will purchase those products when we arrive in Europe. It would be a simple matter to slip a Mac-Mini in her carry on bag. It costs about 50 % more to purchase on in Europe.
We already own Photoshop, Illustrator, and Autocad for the Mac. Her work will be supplying a legal copy of Solidworks for Windows on any system we choose.
Autocad shouldn't be a problem on the new Mac mini, as it meets the parameters as listed on their website. Likewise, Illustrator and Photoshop should be good to go no matter which Mac Mini we choose.
We're a little concerned about Solidworks, however. We plan on installing Windows 7 in Bootcamp on the Mini, then Solidworks. Their website lists the HD P3000 Intel chip as acceptable, but not the HD 3000 of the four core mini-server.
Question: would it be better for us to choose the 2.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 or the 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 Server? We will also upgrade said machine to 8gb of ram and possibly an SSD drive, or two, 750gb drives stripe 0 on the server. Or maybe we should choose neither?
Since we're a Mac only household, the task is now relegated to me to come up with a computer that fits the bill. We would prefer to take my MacPro with us, but that's just not possible at this time, since we won't be shipping a container to Europe. We're not too interested in laptops; though taking them with us on the airplane would be simple, I don't feel that we need the higher cost of the laptop screen, trackpad and keyboard that won't be used with her CAD software. She'll need a bigger monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard with number pad. We will purchase those products when we arrive in Europe. It would be a simple matter to slip a Mac-Mini in her carry on bag. It costs about 50 % more to purchase on in Europe.
We already own Photoshop, Illustrator, and Autocad for the Mac. Her work will be supplying a legal copy of Solidworks for Windows on any system we choose.
Autocad shouldn't be a problem on the new Mac mini, as it meets the parameters as listed on their website. Likewise, Illustrator and Photoshop should be good to go no matter which Mac Mini we choose.
We're a little concerned about Solidworks, however. We plan on installing Windows 7 in Bootcamp on the Mini, then Solidworks. Their website lists the HD P3000 Intel chip as acceptable, but not the HD 3000 of the four core mini-server.
Question: would it be better for us to choose the 2.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 or the 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 Server? We will also upgrade said machine to 8gb of ram and possibly an SSD drive, or two, 750gb drives stripe 0 on the server. Or maybe we should choose neither?