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Dell vs Apple
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[Walter Soyka] “I think it’s worth paying a company like Apple or Dell or HP in my case to do what they do.
“Walter, I’m surprised to hear this from you – the companies above are NOT in the business of building purpose-built “turnkey” video workstations, they are in the business of building workstations for business, medical, government, and military use, which are then repurposed for video applications.
No one who elects to purchase a professionally built edit station should assume that means purchasing direct from the manufacturer – manufacturers simply don’t know enough about the demands of video – this is why VARs (value added resellers) who specialize in building and maintaining video systems exist.
When Tim suggests HP has a department that specializes in video support etc., I don’t believe he is speaking from personal experience, but rather from HP’s marketing materials. HP will fix your workstation, but if there’s anything else wrong, drivers, add on peripherals, networking, etc., their technicians will not touch it.
As someone who has sold many HP workstations, including a special line-up of supposedly purpose-built turnkey RED workstations, I can tell you, there is no such thing as a true “turnkey video workstation” sold direct from HP or any other of the big three. So, anyone reading this who wants a real turnkey solution should contact a reseller who sells turnkey solution – manufacturers are NOT in that business, period, end of story.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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As if on cue, here is a recent article about a Mac users of 23 years going with an HP Z series.
https://motionworks.net/making-the-switch/
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And just for the heck of it here is an article about Marco Solorio of OneRiver Media upgrading a 2009 MP as opposed to buying a nMP.
https://www.onerivermedia.com/blog/?p=1572
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[David Roth Weiss] “Walter, I’m surprised to hear this from you – the companies above are NOT in the business of building purpose-built “turnkey” video workstations, they are in the business of building workstations for business, medical, government, and military use, which are then repurposed for video applications. “
I don’t think most people here actually need turnkey video workstations anymore. Look at the number of people completely happy with a COTS 5K iMac for editorial.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Tim Wilson] “Anyway, I also love HP’s support. Need a replacement part overnight? No problem. Not that I’ve ever needed a replacement part for a computer made by anyone. You probably haven’t either. But you can find reports in the COW from guys who were shooting on location, far from home, and had FedEx on site with a new part the next morning.”
I took a Mac to an Apple store several years ago to have a MBP logic board replaced. I had to go the mall, and my computer had to go back and forth to Texas. It took a few days to get back.
I had an HP tech in my office, parts and tools in hand, the morning after the motherboard in one of my EliteBooks failed.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Charlie Austin] “but that article was classic FUD. X is iMovie pro?”
I think calling it FUD short-changes the article. There is pretty even praise and criticism of both Dell and Apple. The iMovie comment is from a user.
Granted, as someone with one foot on the publishing side, I can certainly recognize an article that’s skewed towards an advertiser and away from a non-advertiser. Nevertheless, the central point is true – Apple, through its own strategies – allowed a market that they once owned to open more widely to competitors. Both in hardware and in software.
[David Roth Weiss] “Now, back to Dell specifically, if you know Windows inside and out, or if you have a dedicated IT team at your facility who do, then Dell machines are as good as any other, but short of that, I’d say buyer be beware, unless you have loads of time to wait in Dell’s support cue, which ultimately still may not pay off.”
I think for a single user, it’s all the same. For a larger facility with networking, then Mac OS is easier in the middle size (4-5 stations). But, you get a large enough installation, you’ll need a SAN or IT specialists with both Windows and Mac OS.
[Tim Wilson] “The problem at the time (and may still be, but I don’t know) is that Dell components were so commoditized that you really couldn’t know for a fact what you were testing. For one round, the GLUE on the FANS was failing, so the fans were winding up in the bottom of the case pointing in some random direction, and computers were overheating and crashing.”
In my own experience, I’ve been quite happy with HPs and IBMs (back when Avid Symphonies started out on the IBMs). Dells – so,so. I like Dell monitors a lot and their mobile workstations are pretty decent. But if you want robust, then HP is the way to go. For all-in-ones, the HP Z1G2 blows away the iMacs. But, we aren’t talking cheap.
[Walter Soyka] “An HP Z840 actually costs (and weighs) more than a comparably equipped nMP. A tricked-out Z840 gets you a lot more and costs a lot more. It’s been my experience over the last four years that Windows on good hardware “just works” exactly as much as Macs do.
“If I only needed to run Avid, Adobe or Blackmagic products, this would be the way to go for best performance.
[Andrew Kimery] “And just for the heck of it here is an article about Marco Solorio of OneRiver Media upgrading a 2009 MP as opposed to buying a nMP.”
I’ve upgraded a number of MP towers (SSD and beefier GPU), I would say it’s great for everything EXCEPT FCPX. It helps, but the results are not as good as with a brand new MacPro (trashcan), iMac or MBP.
Personally, I prefer Mac OS and Apple machines. However, I have had far more component failures with all the Macs I’ve owned and/or used than the PCs. This includes at least 2 logic boards on different Macs. Never had that be the case with the PCs.
OTOH, anytime I priced out the machine I wanted, the Mac version was either cheaper or at the same price level.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I’m certainly not in Hollywood or San Francisco any longer, but I get on site service for my Mac Pros here on little Kauai in Hawaii, at least under Applecare, cost covered. Sold and supported Avids and Media 100’s on Macs and another system on Windows. No comparison that the Windows systems, both the computers, IBM and Intergraph, and Windows system software caused me many more headaches than Mac hardware and OS. YMMV.
Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD, Multiple OWC Thunderbay 4 TB2 and eSATA QX2 RAID 5 HD systems -
I follow John on Twitter. He’s wasn’t too happy last I checked because HP dropped the price of his system $1,000 *after* he bought his.
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[Walter Soyka] “I don’t think most people here actually need turnkey video workstations anymore. Look at the number of people completely happy with a COTS 5K iMac for editorial.
“I do think Macs come closer to being ready to go right out of the box, and Macs are definitely easier to work with on a DIY basis (DIY=do it yourself), but for the basis of this conversation, trust me, there are more people here that should be purchasing turnkey systems from “real” integrators who aren’t, than the other way around, and until you work on the other side (sales/support) you’ll never really know.
Keep in mind, hardware companies ONLY fix their hardware, they don’t fix software and they don’t fix peripherals. And, most issues are NOT typically with the computer hardware itself, but rather with integration of software and peripherals. So, when getting all warm and fuzzy about HP, Dell, or Apple replacing motherboards and such, that’s a very tiny, tiny part of the support necessary for most post professionals.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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Where I work we have a bit of everything. We keep creative edit and graphics on Macs. Most other places we have HP.
We have a large on-air graphics system that is a mix of HP workstations and Dell servers. I had one of the RAID controllers fail on one of the Dells. After trying to get Dell support to help, they gave up and just bought the part off Ebay.
Dell on one call will tell us that we need to call a different number: “You are a large business, you need to call this number…”, “You’re a small business, you need to call this (other) number…”
I eventually had to call the vendor of the system and they we able to get Dell to do the right thing, but it shouldn’t have to happen that way.
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