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switching to a single comp.. 17" MBP. Foolish Idea?

mikes70mustang said:
one comp. is a bad idea. you always need a backup. Esp. if it is for your work. Break/ send one out for repair and your screwed
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He could keep the old MBP for that purpose.

I am keeping my old crap Windows laptop around for exactly that reason. In a pinch, I can get my working environment up and running on that thing in about a day.

I have backups, naturally. Need backups because HD failure is not a question of if, but rather of when.

Anyway - I have a 17 UMBP as my primary working machine. I have a 24" 1920x external monitor which I never use - the built in display of the MBP is good enough and I am so used to it by now. The 17" with the long battery life is really a fantastic machine.

My older 15" MBP had severe heat issues - the 17 has none - it's perfectly fine, might sometimes get warm, but overall no problems. That, in turn, improves reliability significantly. I am convinced that I had so many hard drive failures in the last few years mainly because the drive got too hot.

Edit: And yes, I am getting the 1TB drive. I am thinking about actually putting it in the optibay (see another thread here), and installing a fast 120GB SSD as the main drive. Speed of an SSD, room of a HD - best of both worlds.
 
Just get the 17". It's plenty portable. People talk about it as if it's a sheet of plywood. I carry mine around in my Tom Bihn bag all the time.

The matte HD screen is jawdropping. I could never deal with the low resolution of the 13/15 models after owning a 17".
 
Obsidian6 said:
As far as glossy vs. matte, it ABSOLUTELY has to be anti-glare. I've worked on the glossy screens and it drives me nuts. Plus the color is just off.
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As a photographer myself, I have to disagree. You need a certain degree of ambient light for color correction which the glossy screens excel at. The hues seem to run truer. I use both types of screens and by far, my glossy edits match more closely with the half dozen or so print labs I use - regardless of paper. On the other hand, I have a hard time calibrating a matte screen... it needs to be very dark to get the proper print match.

Video is another story and even though color standards exist, \you will not find 2 televisions displaying the same colorset.
 
coolbreeze said:
Just get the 17". It's plenty portable. People talk about it as if it's a sheet of plywood. I carry mine around in my Tom Bihn bag all the time.

The matte HD screen is jawdropping. I could never deal with the low resolution of the 13/15 models after owning a 17".
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I carry mine with me all the time too. It's portable, as long as you keep the other stuff that you are also carrying around to a minimum - something I always struggle with which is why my backpack ends up weighing a ton. Look at it as a free workout though.

As the owner of a 17" glossy I strongly recommend getting the matte screen as well. It's a portable machine, and you are going to be outside or near a window at some point, and the reflections are bad.

I was really giving the glossy a chance there, too - I thought I might get used to it, I can crank up the brightness to eliminate reflections. I much prefer the design with the black bezel and glass screen. But after all is said and done, I think I'd now go for the slightly-less awesome-looking but way more practical matte. I had a matte on my old 15" MBP and it was just great - great without any ifs and buts, just great. The 17" glossy is gorgeous - you have to get a very expensive LCD to keep up with the image quality. But the reflections don't go away, and you don't get used to them. They just suck, plain and simple. If you want perfect, matte is a must.
 
sukanas said:
Fool! Wouldn't you need an IPS panel for 'professional' photography and not a cheapass TN panel?
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In his first post he has a 23" at home and I'd hope he does a once over there if possible but the end result regardless of panel is how did the print turn out? Most people buy prints from the pro's and not their panel every time 😉
 
a 2006 model dual core 2.66 macpro is faster in most situations than any current apple laptop. Look at geekbench and multicore cinebench results.
Apple laptop technology can never compete with intel server class processors.
 
I just sold my Dell workstation (2.83GHz Core 2, 8GB) and my Latitude E6400 to get a 15" MBP as a sole computer. I think it's going to be fine, I really do like having all my stuff on one computer. I've still got my old G4 as a backup but it's really just good for basic stuff at this point.
 
sbb155 said:
a 2006 model dual core 2.66 macpro is faster in most situations than any current apple laptop. Look at geekbench and multicore cinebench results.
Apple laptop technology can never compete with intel server class processors.
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Of course the desktop is faster but with SSDs we are looking at a much more even playing field.

I think my MacBook Pro would smoke that 2006 MacPro with an SSD - it has the same processor speed, and if I put a SSD in it would have a way faster hard drive.

Desktops used to be much faster mostly because a 7200 RPM 3.5" hard drive was way faster than the normal 5400 RPM small-ish 2.5" drives. 2.5" drives have gotten slightly faster since then but still lag significantly behind desktop drives. But SSDs eat them both for breakfast.

A new MacPro is still a lot faster than any laptop, clearly. But SSDs make the gap much smaller even in this case.

Currently thinking about the Intel X25-M G2... it totally kills the fastest WD 10k velociraptor in every benchmark.
 
I've tried this approach before but always missed having a desktop computer of some sort as well. There's just so much more you can do with something like a Mac Pro and usually you end up needing a desktop at some point, whether its for disk space, backups, the other half using it when you're away, using it as a media server etc.
 
Yeah this is true. I think i'll keep the mac pro around a bit longer. Especially given the fact that if it has any more problems it will be replaced with a new Nehalem mac pro. (At least according to Apple, they gave their word!) So.. that's kind of a perk?

Ironically I'm thinking of going in a slightly different direction. I'm now thinking about unloading just the 15" and getting a refurb 2.53 13" for travel and editing. If I leave the major editing to the mac pro, I'll not really need a hardcore laptop.

Also, to answer the comment about being a fool. I have a 23" ACD at home, which is an IPS panel display and is calibrated once a week or every other week (depending on how often I do it) with a X-Rite Optix XR PRO. So yes I'm working on a color accurate (for what I have) workflow.

My other display which is currently in my father's possession until he gets an iMac is a 24" Dell 2405FPW, which is actually a PVA panel. I'd probably sell that one and try to get another 23" ACD or sell both monitors and get 2 new 24" LCDs.

So to slightly de-rail my own topic.

anyone using a 13" MBP find its adequate for photo work?
 
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