mac or pc laptop, and which one, for creative suite/production premium?

[Tim Kolb]

It’s been about 10 years since I was “Mac-based” so that may make me a partisan, however I think anytime you are looking at power for the price, Windows just wins. If you’re talking about product design, or other considerations, Mac has several categories where it’s still preferable in my opinion.

Unfortunately we’re all still categorized as creatives in the aesthetic of what we do, but in order to be productive, we also need to be a heavy-lift processor of motion imagery…so processing power results in better system response, which gets out of the way of creativity…so my Lenovo laptop, which has the design aesthetic of a tool box relative to a MacBook Pro is actually a creative tool.

As far as RAM vs processor, Adobe is RAM, RAM, RAM intensive…I have older machines that I’ve been able to extend by just stuffing them with RAM. When buying a new machine, I typically look at the fastest processor available, drop down one notch (usually a nearly undetectable speed difference with a very detectable price difference), and divert those funds (and more sometimes) to RAM.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[John Young]

Tim,
I was in pretty much the same situation myself about a year and a half ago. Same budget, same history with Macs. I was starting to think Windows because of the versatility of options along with the bang for the buck factor. I mostly use Adobe Premiere Pro, with a little bit of After Effects. I ultimately purchased a beefy mobile workstation type laptop through Sager.

You will get a lot of opinions on this. Here is mine.

After a year in a half using my Windows laptop, I frankly wish I would have went with a Mac instead. My main issues with my Windows laptop is not when working inside PP or AE. Editing multiple streams of H.264 footage works pretty smooth. But there is just an annoying amount of little things that I don’t remember dealing with on Macs. I really miss that ‘it just works’ factor that Apple has. For example, I have USB3 ports that only transfer at USB2 speeds, my desktop background image gets confused when I go back and forth between using a 2nd monitor and using it unplugged, slow start up/wake up processes, the fan seems to always be humming on my PC even when just checking email, short batter life, really heavy AC adapter, gets very warm on your thighs when you use it on your lap, etc.

I made my purchase in January 2012. It is Windows 7 not 8. I am running PP CS5.5 not CS6. But in any case, I wanted to share my experience.
John

John Young
Surrounding Media
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[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Tim Dowse] “I want to get the most bang for my buck, and I’m considering switching to a mobile workstation PC.”

If you like the clean design of Macs, I’d then look at Lenovo Y500, Y580 and W530. The first one is the best “bang for the buck”, while the last one – most “pro” in terms of components, design, expandability, enterprise class warranty and support options. The first two can be “nicely configured” for editing for under $1.2K, the W530 – for around $1.6K: 16GB RAM, Core i7, 1080p display, discrete graphics that works well in CS6.

There are many other options (including HP, Dell, Toshiba, Asus and aforementioned Sager), yet Lenovo models strike me as a good balance between clean design, power and value.

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Paul Neumann]

I’ve been using the Creative Suite since v1 and I have to say I’ve never felt it work better than it does on my MacBook Pro. Purchased a 15″ quad i7 with 16gig of ram in March 2011. At that time was 5.0 and coming from an HP 8200 with with the same software and the difference was really nice. I had that workstation pretty spec’ed out with 32 gig of ram and a new quadro card so it was plenty fast and all, but the move back to mac was better than I expected. And it almost didn’t happen…I had originally ordered a Dell mobile workstation laptop but they built it wrong and the thing wouldn’t even boot. In need of a machine I told our guy to add a macbook to the next order and I’ve never looked back.

If I was buying a new workstation I’d probably go HP. But the outfit I’m with is a take it with you and work wherever you are kinda joint so there ain’t a workstation to be seen.

I’d recommend you get a MacBook Pro. No opinion on whether you go Retina or not. I’ve got a Thunderbolt monitor I run mine through at work and at home so display-wise I’m set and agnostic.

[Tim Kolb]

Hi John,

That’s a pretty good synopsis I would say, though since I don’t have a Sager currently, I can’t comment on that… I’ve had some Sagers and Clevos re-badged as other brands…I actually delaiminated a DVD in one one time, but I haven’t had to slip on the asbestos pants since I retired my Dell M90…(knock on wood).

Stronger processors/configurations affect battery life…no question about that. Apple has traditionally done a really good job of balancing power draw with computer power in my opinion, but video production remains a demanding task.

All that said, I haven’t shopped for a Mac in some time now, and I know that the price gap has closed up somewhat, so I checked on what the actual price would be to compare to my Lenovo W520 from 2011. The 15″ Non-Retina MBP seemed the most comparable to build on…

The processor is a quad core, hyper threaded i7…faster one is available the new Mac, but mine was current when it was purchased…I’m running at 2.3 GHz with an 8 MB L3 cache, and the new 15″ MacBook Pro has 2.3-2.7 available…with an 8 MB L3 cache

Memory…I have 16 GB in the Lenovo, the Mac maxes out at 8 GB

Graphics card…the new Mac has a GeForce 650M with 1 GB of DDR5 on it…the Lenovo W520 came with a Quadro 2000M with 2GB of DDR3

The W520 has 2 USB3 ports, a USB2 port, and a USB/eSATA port as well as an Express34 slot (that all work at expected speeds), DisplayPort, VGA port, etc. and the 15″ MBP has 2 USB3 ports, a FW800 port and a Thunderbolt port.

Hard drives are both 500 GB, with the Mac at 5400rpm (longer battery) and the Lenovo at 7200 (editing with the internal drive is practical)

Displays…the Lenovo with a standard 15.6″ display, 1920×1080…LED backlit… The MacBook about the same physical size with a resolution of 1680×1050 as a 100.00 option (1440×900 standard)

Overall, I got the two to come out nearly even on price…April 2013’s MacBook Pro 15″ (non Retina) and September 2011’s Lenovo W520 configured as described for 2350-2450.00 USD (actually the Lenovo was 2366.00 before tax and the Mac was 2449.00 without shipping, etc).

My biggest concern with MacBook Pro for Adobe video post production use remains the RAM limitations.

If a Mac laptop is truly your preference, I’d recommend looking closely at dropping another 4-500.00 so you can get a max of 16GB of RAM on the Retina 15″ MacBook Pro as well as another Thunderbolt (2 in total) port and an HDMI port…a 512 GB SSD…lots more resolution, though you may want to wear a jeweler’s monacle to see some of the detail…unfortunately you’ll still be stuck with a 1 GB gamer card with 8 bit color precision for GPU acceleration for Mercury…

But…they really aren’t THAT far off in price in the grand scheme of things…the fairest comparison, the W530 which is the current Lenovo model comes out about the same that I paid, right around 2500.00 USD with a 180GB SSD and a 7200rpm 500GB drive, 16GB of RAM (upgradable to 32GB), a Quadro 2000M (10 bit precision over DisplayPort) and a quad core i7 clocking out at around 2.8 GHz.

The price difference between a Retina 15″ and the W530 ends up being about 500.00 unless you up the W530’s RAM to 32 GB for 360.00…if you’re comfortable with Mac, I guess the question is whether you’ll need 10 bit output from a Quadro card and will gain enough performance from double the potential RAM to learn a new OS and save 500 bucks.

Not as clear a decision as it once was…that’s certain.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Tim Dowse]

Ugh, this is a tough one.

I don’t mind a bit of a learning curve for the OS. And I am keen on a machine that’s upgradable. I would be happy spending less now on a machine that will be “good enough”, but then upgrade it over time (add RAM, maybe better GPU). That doesn’t seem possible with macs at all.

From what I can tell from the apple website, there seem to be very few configurations available with the current crop of macbook pros. And i can’t find anywhere that says their graphics cards work with cs6 gpu acceleration. Am I missing something?

So I guess the next question is, how important is the GPU acceleration vs RAM. Is it more important to max out on RAM, and then just add whatever card you can afford? What’s the difference between a high end GPU vs a low end GPU vs a non-compatible GPU?

Also, connectivity options seem way better on PCs. And they come with an optical drive (I still find myself authoring DVDs).

But it’s precisely the kind of “ugh, I wish I was using a mac” feeling that I don’t want to be feeling on a regular basis.

Argh!

[Tim Kolb]

[Tim Dowse] “And i can’t find anywhere that says their graphics cards work with cs6 gpu acceleration. Am I missing something?”

Adobe has said that the next version of Premiere Pro will be able to utilize any installed OpenCL or CUDA GPU…all the display cards I saw in the mac configurations would be compatible with CS6 now (GeForce cards are CUDA).

With Adobe software I have simply never regretted any RAM upgrade I have ever made…it makes a significant difference. That said, the GPU does help as well, and I think the GPUs I see in the Mac configs of the moment are about as small as I’d go…but they qualify.

I switched away from Mac back when OSX Cheetah came out and Premiere (not Pro) 6.5 ran on it, and FCP had to boot into OS9 until Puma (which I thought a strange state of affairs)…so I’ve been on Windows a while, but switching OS’s is not a trivial thing when you’re trying to get work done…the posters in this thread on modern MBPs seem happy enough…I guess you can be in the army and still hate the war.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Joseph W. bourke]

I bought a very slightly used Lenovo W510 (still under warranty) a while back, and the 16GB of RAM, USB 3.0 ports, and the fastest laptop NVidia card (at the time), made the decision easy. It also came with a dock, which has a number of extra video ports, and makes it easy to mirror my display on a larger monitor. It also has a nice ability to pop the DVD drive out, with a couple of button presses, and install a second hard drive. I think the current model is at W530.

I can bring it to a client’s site to work on graphics, and it’s almost as fast as my desktop at the office.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Tim Dowse]

The Lenovo does look like good value. But to my mind it’s certainly got a face for radio. I am prepared to step away from the Mac, but I’d prefer not to have to go home with the ugly stepsister.

What about Origin Laptop workstations? I’ve come them mentioned in a few threads. They seem to me to be a good balance of value and customization. Anyone have experience with those?

For a comparison, $2050 with apple gets me
15 inch screen
2.3GHz Quad Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 512MB
8GB 1600 MHz RAM
750 GB HDD @ 7200rpm

Whereas $2050 with Origin gets me
15 inch screen
2.7GHz Quad Core i7
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670MX with 3GB
16GB 1600 MHz RAM
120 GB SSD
750 GB HDD @ 7200rpm
DVD optical drive

[Tim Kolb]

[Tim Dowse] “The Lenovo does look like good value. But to my mind it’s certainly got a face for radio. I am prepared to step away from the Mac, but I’d prefer not to have to go home with the ugly stepsister.”

Yeah…I guess I’ve never made a purchase decision on a computer based on looks…it’s a tool. I don’t worry so much about what it will look like in the morning…it stays on the desk.

I have no experience with Origin…they certainly appear to have the neon gamer thing down as that’s their heritage.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor