pixelicious opened this issue on Mar 19, 2003 ยท 17 posts
ahookey posted Thu, 20 March 2003 at 9:18 PM
We just received DELL laptops: Precision M50 (2GHz Mobile P4, 512 MB RAM, Quadro4 500 GoGL, 1600x1200 display, windows 2000 professional) at work. I just brought it home to demo a remote connection. I am amazed. I have a Mac g4 867 MHz, 768 Mb RAM, ATI 8500. I installed Carrara 2.1 just to see how it compared on a number of models. The renders were twice as quick with the DELL and the OpenGL responsiveness was quite amazing. I am now totally smitten. I want one. To top it off, I have a Linksys router connected to my cable modem. Plugged in the laptop, the network settings were already set to "Obtain an IP address automatically" so I was on the net straight away. Shared a disk on the laptop and I was able to mount it from my Mac straight away with out any trouble and copied files across. So, i learned that the underlying PC hardware is quite amazing (and would love to hear from someone who is using a new Mac Laptop) and could quite easily replace my PC workstation at work. I also learned the the MACOS 10.2.4 has come a long way when I can effortly mount a PC disk. The laptop cost about CA$5000, which was about the same I bought my MAC for less than 2 years ago. I love the portability, my next computer will probably be a laptop. I choose the PC workstations at work and am looking to replace our ageing ones. DELL does have some very good deals and are backed up with very good support, which I always stress when I recommend co-workers buy there own (make sure you can take it back and get a full refund if you don't like it!). I've never really stressed Carrara to push it to the limits interms of polygons. Most of the CAD models I've imported have not totalled to much more than 250,000 polygons when all is modelled. It would be nice to get some feedback from people who have done models with 1,000,000+ polygons to see if the hardware is stressed and to see how well Carrara copes. I don't think you'll be disappointed with whatever PC you buy. Just make sure you get a full refund if you don't like it (and have it in writing). A