MBP sufficient for Industrial Design Program?

[dereklandon]

I'll be heading into Industrial Design in the Fall of this year and I was wondering if the 2.2 MBP would be sufficient for the 4 years of my undergrad. I'll be spending a lot of time in the studio so I guess I'll need portability.

Right now I'm using an old school HP as my everything - taking notes, surfing and for work in Creative Suite.

I know the MBP will be overkill for CS3, but I need a good graphics card for 3D modeling in Solidworks, Rhino, Maya and CAD software. I plan to swap out the ram for 2x2gb in the latter years but I'm worried whether or not the 128mb do the job. Does it make sense to have two notebooks?

 

[ktbubster]

I'm in an Industrial Design Program... and for the first 2 years I was using a Tibook with 1ig of ram and was able to run CS2 suite just fine and only rendered with the school comps. Since then I got the MBP in my sig and have been using that with parallels for solidworks etc and it has worked BEAUTIFULLY. The portability is DEFINITELY useful for me as a lot of time is in studio like you said. It's also good to be able to bring your own computer into the labs (which I assume your school will have a plethora of) when moving files and comparing colors/images and make presentations.

CS3 flies on my CD as well as the other programs in parallels. If you find you need more power for some REALLY complex rendering (althouh I don't forsee it) you can always use one of the school computers. I would however, suggest investing a little into a external LCD which may come in handy when doing presentations and/or rendering with a lot of windows open.

Check the refurb store... a 2.16 before SR would do you fine too and you could save a little, although I know you'll be doing the student discount. Eitherway... the 2.2 will be more then enough for you.

Edit: Also, I am only running with 1.5g of ram right now. I can't really forsee you needing any more then 2gig of ram for QUITE some time, as 1.5 is more then enough on this comp and yours will have c2d and faster processor.

 

[dereklandon]

Thanks for your advice.

I'm going to order the 2.2 MBP tomorrow. I think it'll do the job and like you said, I can just use the school computers for heavy rendering and such.

I considered going refurbished for a while but there hasn't been a 2.16 online for a while. They're all 2.33 with glossy displays - I'm going with the Matte for color accuracy and anti-glare.

As for an external LCD - I will definitely pick one up in the future. I spent most of my time in front of a 20" for 8hr lab periods this year. Those days were brutal but multitasking on the screens were a breeze.

Thanks again!