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Using the New Macbook for Web Design?

T

tyreal

macrumors member
Original poster
Anyone use either one of the new Macbooks for web design? I'm not really interested in the Macbook Pros due to portability and cost reasons.

I'm looking to purchase a laptop for school and some occasional on the road web design. I currently have a dual monitor PC setup at home where I do most of my design. The home setup runs CS3 with great stability and speed, but I would like a laptop that can not only render Photoshop images at a decent speed, but also push graphics to at least one of my 22" monitors for when I'm at home. I do very little graphic design so I'm not working with extremely large images.

Just curious if any of you have had any experience with this.

Thanks!
 
tyreal said:
Anyone use either one of the new Macbooks for web design? I'm not really interested in the Macbook Pros due to portability and cost reasons.

I'm looking to purchase a laptop for school and some occasional on the road web design. I currently have a dual monitor PC setup at home where I do most of my design. The home setup runs CS3 with great stability and speed, but I would like a laptop that can not only render Photoshop images at a decent speed, but also push graphics to at least one of my 22" monitors for when I'm at home. I do very little graphic design so I'm not working with extremely large images.

Just curious if any of you have had any experience with this.

Thanks!
Click to expand...


Well, the speed is there, you won't really notice difference there. The big issue here is the screen. The screen is significantly smaller and has a small viewing angle.

Viewing angle doesn't really bother me as I know I won't be doing color proofing on this laptop(or any laptop screen). Btw, get a SIPS panel. It's a night and day difference.

To compensate for the low res, I've made it a goal to remember all the panel shortcuts. Now I actually work faster now.
 
I used my previous macbook (white 2.2ghz with 4GB ram) to do some moderate to heavy graphic works and photo editing involving photoshop, illustrator, and indesign (I'm a design graduate) and the machine handled them extremely well. I have the aluminium macbook now, although I have yet to use it to do some graphic stuff I'd expect it to give same (or even better) performance, given the new graphics chip.

The size of the screen is a bit limiting, I'd say, but I have a nomad life and it makes a great travel companion!

Not sure how it'd perform when connected to the external monitor though.
 
If a new Macbook couldn't handle web design, Apple would be out of the computer business. It's like asking if a new car can turn corners ok.
 
mcdj said:
If a new Macbook couldn't handle web design, Apple would be out of the computer business. It's like asking if a new car can turn corners ok.
Click to expand...

So you've had experience rendering images and objects in Photoshop on the new Macbook, with multiple applications open at the same time, such as Dreamweaver, Illustrator, etc.? And had it connected to a 22" monitor?

I get the feeling you didn't even read the initial post.

Thanks.
 
Works perfectly fine in my opinion.

I do professional photography work on my new alu macbook 2.4(4gb ram), which includes batch scanning film and extensive Lightroom and Photoshop use. Also do a lot of web developing from Flash to Java/PHP/RoR programming.

Haven't had a problem with memory management or slow downs and I definitely don't feel that the screen is too small. I do most of my work on the go, between classes, coffee shops, girlfriends house and whatnot. Even when I'm at home I rarely even bother to hook it up to my 22inch monitor.

Before getting the new alum macbook I used to use a 12inch powerbook g4, top of the line custom made desktop, and the new hp dv5t(15inch 1680x1050 screen)
 
Being a graphic design student (and studying digital media next), I find my Macbook SR (with a Dell 22" monitor) works quite well with Adobe Creative Suite 3.
Most of the work load is large Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign files, and usually multi-tasking between those programs, and it seems to handle it all quite smoothly, so web design should be no problem 😀

Also despite what people may say, the 1280x800 resolution is very workable, especially for on the go work. And you'll find that the graphics card will be more than powerful enough drive your 22" external display 🙂 (since the old X3100 works very well with no issues)

Hope this helps 😀
 
i highly suggest adobe dreamweaver CS3
and i am running that on a macbook 2.1ghz!!! so if the new ones cant run it, then i'd be like HOLY *BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP* thats *BLEEEEP*ing messed up!
 
dude a macbook is definitely good for web design. anything to do with good graphics a mac can do it. 😀

especialy with the new GPU, this is no kick to a macbook.
 
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