-
Should mac user crossover to HP Envy desktop for After Effects and Production premium?
I am thinking of investing in HP’s latest ENVY desktop and I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with them good or bad on if they work well with After Effects and Production Premium? It’s on sale right now so I’m very tempted to get it, but I’m very reluctant because I’m used to working on macs and don’t have any experience working with pc and after effects. I was wondering if this would be a good computer.
To be honest, I’ve been saving up for the latest iMac and I don’t have enough money for it yet, but I see that I can get this computer for almost a thousand dollars cheaper right now with the sale going on (and I have enough money for it). I know an imac would be the better computer overall and more reliable, but if the HP Envy is reliable as well I would much rather get this computer and save the money. Any thoughts or contributions anyone might have would be appreciated. Thanks!
Here are the specs of the computer: $1700
HP ENVY Phoenix h9-1440t Desktop PC
Windows 8 Pro 64
3rd Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770K quad-core processor [3.5GHz, 8MB Shared Cache]
Liquid Cooling Solution
2GB Nvidia GTX680 [Dual Bracket; DVI, HDMI, DP & VGA via adapter]
16GB DDR3-1600MHz SDRAM [2 DIMMs]
2TB 7200RPM SATA RAID 5 (3 x 1TB HDD)
Blu-ray writer & SuperMulti DVD burner
15-in-1 memory card reader, 4 x USB 2.0 (front), 2 x USB 3.0 (top)
Beats Audio ™ — integrated studio quality sound
HP USB keyboard and optical mouse with volume control
Premium Wireless-N LAN card and Bluetooth(R)(1×1)27-inch iMac: $2900
Remove Save
Part number: Z0MS
Available to ship: 5-7 business days
Hardware
3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2X8GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5 -
33 Replies
-
We do everything that we can to make using After Effects as much the same as possible on Mac OS and Windows, and I use both every day. I’d say that you should make the choice based on the performance that you can get for your money.
———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
——————————————————————————————————— -
Hi —————-
— mac have s nicer OS but its largely controlled by Apple in a monopoly environment which has disadvantages.
PC has security issues and you need to get used to loads of dopey emails and how to deal with all the rubbish that gets aimed at you – but no problem as soon as you get used to it….
….. think PC based stuff has more options because of larger user base such as freeware and sparks …..
—- came off Autodesk stuff on Linux and went for a PC myself ….
….. a mate of mine who comes from a mac based print environment started doing Maya stuff had needed new kit — went for a PC having just spent about 2 grand upgrading his mac software … said he wished he had done it before…
….. on balance I reckon PC if you are short on dosh and suspect you will never look back…
…….though loads of people swear by their macs …..
—————– good luck —– chris
===========================================================
-
[Brandon Davidson] “HP ENVY Phoenix h9-1440t Desktop PC”
I haven’t worked with Envy desktops but they look like a good buy, especially that they come with a 2-year warranty. Not sure if that 3-drive RAID5 is a good idea – but then again, I haven’t worked with it.
How’s HP’s return policy on these systems? Perhaps you could get one, test the heck out of it and see if you’re happy?
If you end up getting one, please share your findings – I am very curious how it holds up.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
If you are used to mac, don’t be tempted by the PC side. On my recommendation, our studio invested in a fancy Pro-Max One about a year ago because of no new mac pros and we have had no end of trouble with it. Its nice and fast when it works, but it has had a number of problems, has been much harder to maintain, and has been a general pain in my ass. Some of this might have been a fault of the hardware, not the software but I really hate windows. I consider it a failed experiment and will go back to macs next time. I really hope rumors are true and Apple comes out with a new mac pro this spring.
-Matt
Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com -
[Matthew Woods] “If you are used to mac, don’t be tempted by the PC side. On my recommendation, our studio invested in a fancy Pro-Max One about a year ago because of no new mac pros and we have had no end of trouble with it… I consider it a failed experiment and will go back to macs next time.”
To provide a little counterpoint, I started adding PCs to my little Mac-based studio for full-time creative work a year and a half ago when I got a Z800 from HP to evaluate in cross-platform workflows.
I’ve had a really positive experience. It took a little bit of getting used to (pinky for Control key versus thumb for Command key on most keyboard shortcuts), but I can now bounce back and forth between my Macs and PCs at will. I regularly work on a PC in the office, move my project over to my MacBook Pro laptop, and resume work on the same project on the road or at home. Cross-platform compatibility with Adobe and Maxon products has been right-on. With Adobe’s Creative Cloud, you can even use the same single-user license on one Mac and one PC.
I had prejudices against PCs based on my experiences with Windows XP. Windows 7 has been way, way better than Windows XP. In my experience, it “just works” to the same degree my Macs do, and it’s just as stable and just as secure.
I really like the extra power available on PCs, the additional performance choices, the superior graphics performance, and the additional workflow options. I have since bought another HP Z620 workstation, two 15″ HP EliteBook mobile workstations, and four little HP 8800 Elite SFF computers as render nodes. I’m happy with all the purchases.
PCs and Macs are both complex systems, and you’ll eventually have some kind of problem with either one — as I like to say, computer trouble is cross-platform. I think a lot of Mac users switching to PCs forget about all the Mac voodoo they’ve already internalized: clearing boot caches, trashing preferences, resetting NVRAM, repairing permissions… PCs may have some voodoo, too, and if you do run into an issue, the answer is probably just a Creative Cow post or Google search away.
That said, I haven’t had to tweak my PC BIOS settings. I haven’t had a security problem. I did have to change a registry entry once in the last year and a half; I consider that comparable to any of the Mac OS X chores I’ve done over the years that required Google and Terminal.
I don’t mean to argue with Matt or question his judgment. I’ve read his excellent posts here, and he’s clearly a really smart guy. He tried a PC and didn’t like it, and he’s offering a valid perspective. I only mean to offer my own anecdotal perspective, which differs from his, for consideration, too.
TL;DR — in my experience, the PC platform is viable for daily production use. Follow the same sensible practices with PCs that you would with Macs: buy only quality hardware from top-tier manufacturers with good support, and clone your boot drive once you’ve got everything set and configured.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Thanks Walter,
I will admit, my response was a little knee-jerk. To be fair, I am not the primary user of the PC. I probably know more about PCs and PC troubleshooting than most PC users. I regularly set up museum installations on them, but I have never used one every day. Our editor who is the primary user and has gotten used to it and likes it. I am just the best at troubleshooting computers in our small studio so it usually comes to me to get it working again when something goes wrong, and things seem to go wrong with it more often than the macs in the office.
Also, I think some of our problems might be due to the manufacturer. We decided to go with a Pro-Max for our first PC under the assumption that they were designed specifically for video editing so we would have less problems. We have had a number of hardware problems with the machine as well as software, and I suspect some of it may be due to the machine not having enough internal ventilation.
We have had a lot of problems with the OS though, and strange sporadic problems with it refusing to connect to file share with the macs. (It works some days but not others. The support folks at pro-max never were able to figure that out).
At one point I believed that Adobe debugged their software better on Windows, and that the Windows side would be less buggy. In practice I haven’t found that to be the case, at least with AE and Premiere. There are just as many adobe bugs on Windows as there are on macs.
My thinking would be if you are in the market for an iMac, and not a mac pro, the extra money is worth it. The new iMacs are supposed to be great machines. Maybe I would think different if I used a PC every day.
Good luck with whatever your decision.
-Matt
Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com -
Regarding our work on Mac OS versus Windows:
After Effects was a Mac-only application for a long time. If you walk down the halls here, you see an overwhelming number of Macs.
I don’t want to point the finger of blame, but I will say that Apple is much, much, much more willing to change frameworks, SDKs, operating system features, and other things that cause application makers like us to have to scramble to keep up. This leads to more churn on Mac OS and occasionally bugs that result from this.
———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
——————————————————————————————————— -
That is good to know. Thanks for the input.
I currently own CS5.5 Production Premium for the mac. Is it true that if I purchase the upgrade to CS6 I can crossgrade to the pc or does that cost extra (or is it even possible to crossgrade)? Thanks for the help.
-
Thanks for the input. That was one of my concerns with the PC was that I was going to have to deal with a lot more bloatware and viruses than you usually have to deal with on a mac. I’m encouraged to hear a mac user switched over and liked the experience. Money is a big issue for me and that by far is the biggest draw for me to switch to a pc…
-
> Is it true that if I purchase the upgrade to CS6 I can crossgrade to the pc or does that cost extra (or is it even possible to crossgrade)?
There are two ways to license CS6 software: perpetual license and Creative Cloud Membership subscription. The former is for one operating system; the latter is for any operating system. So, if you have a Creative Cloud license, you can install the software on any operating system. If you buy the perpetual license, it’s just for one operating system. When you upgrade, you don’t need to buy a perpetual license for the same OS that you were using before; you can buy one for another OS.
———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up