Macbook or MacBook Pro for AE!

[Kevin Camp]

i wouldn’t say the intel graphics chip is good, but you won’t need a good one to use ae or photoshop. in ae just set the preview preference to not use opengl and you should be good to go.

there have been several posts about using the macbook for por applications, try seaching the posts. but the biggest difference between the two laptops is the screen size, the little macbook will feel pretty cramped if you are working in ae and photoshop often, but either will run ae and photoshop.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Nicholas Toth]

Certain apple applications don’t like the intel graphics chips (motion complains about it…). I’d go with a macbook pro. Pour in 3 gigs of ram too. Bite the bullet, what you pay is what you get.

Also, with AE progressing into putting more stress on the graphics card, is another reason why I’d recommend the Macbook pro. I have one. It works well enough. If you don’t need portability buy a tower. And don’t forget, if you’re doing mobile computing, take into consideration eyestrain on such a small screen, and the fact that you’ll almost always need to be plugged into an outlet, unless you’re doing simple stuff like browsing the web.

Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com

[Joscha Malburg]

Well thanks for answers!

The Screen Size is not the Problem. The portability is importand, i won’t use tower anymore, but anyway at home i will connect apple cinema display to the notebook and have timeline and stuff like that on the small monitor ( should be going or ? ) So 15″ or 13″ does not decide about that. I’d never use 17″ because its hard to handle.

Well at the office we have big G5 with 4 Gig Ram and stuff like that, in case i can work on big projekts with this computers – for me as a trainee 2200 ( normally 2600 ) is lot of money and i dont know if its worth the price…

any more ideas?

[Kevin Camp]

you would need to check into running 2 monitors on the macbook… i believe you can only get video mirroring on the external video port. meaning what you see on one monitor is the same as the other monitor, so you would not be able to have the timeline on the small monitor and the other panels on the big monitor.

but from the sounds of it, i think the macbook will work for you for a while… but you will probably out grow it sooner than you would the pro.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Brendan Coots]

The other responses here make some good points, but for the record I use a Macbook (white) and frequently take my post-work home with me. This includes After Effects, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Shake and even Maya. The Macbook handles all of them just fine, provided you are a realist and don’t expect octo-Mac Pro performance. That said, it IS speedy enough for everything I’ve thrown at it so far, some apps work better in Parallels (such as Maya) but overall it works great.

To prove the point even further, I got the baseline model with only 1GB RAM and the 80GB hard drive, and it STILL works fine! I plan to eventually throw 3GB of RAM in this puppy, and I’m sure it will work great for years to come.

[Nicholas Toth]

https://sewelldirect.com/vtbookpcmciacard.asp

Along with a macbook pro. Thats what I’d recommend. The previous post is very valid, but a co-worker of mine has had a handful of issues with macbook. He upgraded to a macbook pro just for the video card. Seems like this is turning more into a potatoh potatoe discussion — and don’t forget — its about the artist not about that machine. Give a chimp an octo core and he’s going to throw poop at you.

[Ken Latman]

I have been debating the same question for awhile. I have an old G4 TiBook and would like to upgrade it.

I do most of my work on G5 tower for person use. After talking with the Apple sales people at the store and doing my own research, I came to the conclusion the fastest MacBook in the line (the black) would be OK for my needs.

I’m just waiting until 10.5 comes out before I make another big purchase. Then I will make sure to that the HD is the largest of the 5400rpm drives and add RAM.

I beat the heck out of my TiBook and the only two benefits I could see with a new MacBook Pro would be 1) the graphics card of course and 2) the Express card expansion. I only used expansion bay once in my TiBook and that was when my firewire ports died. I bought a card that could give me new firewire ports.

You can add more than one monitor to the MacBook (it will be taxing of course on the graphics chip) with a Matrox DualHead2Go device (www.matrox.com/graphics/en/gxm/products/dh2go/home.php). Higher resolutions will not be supported either.

[Brendan Coots]

I totally agree, I think that a lot of this discussion comes down to preference. I suppose my primary point is that most vendors out there tend to market in ways that make people think you simply HAVE to have certain hardware for certain activities.

A good example is this – one benefit touted in the Macbook Pro vs. the standard Macbook is its ability to use up to 3GB RAM. They don’t tell people that you CAN easily install and use 3GB RAM in the Macbook, it just disables Dual Channel memory mode in the integrated graphics card. The performance benefits more than make up for this, but Apple would prefer people spend an extra $1k for the Pro.

Either way, both laptops are great machines and will serve any design professional quite well.

[Brendan Coots]

Quick note on the hard drive – there is a Seagate 160GB 7200 RPM laptop drive that works fine in either version of the Macbooks. Other World Computing has a decent price:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST9160823AS/

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

FWIW, the Macbook is not supported by the new Final Cut Studio 2 and OpenGL acceleration will be minimal (if any) in After Effects CS3 with it.
I recommend the MacBook Pro, if you can justify the price difference.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
ar(AT)adolforozenfeld.com