I'm going to need a new computer soon for multi-discipline design..

[jrm27]

Hi all,

In the near future (maybe two months or so), I'm going to end up getting a new computer for my design work. Currently I do a little bit of everything (photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, etc...) I have been doing all of this on a mid 2010 imac 27" with the 2.93 i7, to which I have added RAM to get me to 16gigs. I'm thinking I may try to venture into some very very basic 3D rendering with Cinema4D, but that is yet to be seen in the budget of things.

The imac has been doing an admirable job. It gets choked up on AE renders a bit, so I usually take that into account and render overnight when possible.

For my new computer (my current one will be going to someone else), I'm trying to figure out what I should get. I'm getting the impression that my new responsibilities will need me to be mobile, so I've been looking at the MBP lineup. Perhaps I could keep going with a new imac, or even (if released anytime soon) and MacPro, but I'm thinking I may end up being asked to look at a laptop. Which is fine.

However, I was wondering if you might be able to recommend if a MBP would be able to keep pace with an imac. I'll miss the screen size sorely, but I have an external monitor I can use when in the office.

Coudl you advise me on what struggles I might come up against with a MBP, and/or which models you would recommend for a person in my position? Thanks!

-jon

 

[talmy]

I'm one generation behind you. I've got a late 2009 27" 2.8Ghz i7 iMac and a late 2011 15" MBP with i7 and highres antiglare display. Heavy usage (on both) includes FCPX and several Electrical Engineering CAD programs running in a Windows 7 virtual machine under Parallels while capturing video with iShowU Pro. Add to that Photoshop and Aperture for my photography hobby.

Both have 8GB of RAM. The MBP also has a 750GB 7200RPM Seagate Maximus hybrid drive.

The MBP outperforms the iMac across the board although the iMac is still perfectly usable. Of course both are faster now and I'd certainly expect a new top end iMac will outperform any new MBP.

I've looked at the new retina MBPs but feel a maxed out 15" highres "classic" MBP is a better value. I need the Ethernet and (at least for now) FW800 for my external video storage HD which would have to be on dongles for the RMBP. And the highres option makes for a display that is retina-enough. I'm also running about 350GB of disk in use so the base SSD wouldn't be sufficient in the RMBP.