[lug] Wanted: Recommandations for HDD and Mem Upgrades for CU Freshman

[Lee Woodworth]

Nate Duehr wrote:
> siegfried wrote:
> 
>> My daughter just received a couple of college scholarships. She
>> received a new (Del, I think) notebook as part of her first
>> scholarship and recently learned that she has to spend the money
>> received from her second scholarship or loose it.

.... snip ....

>> Does anyone have any compelling arguments as to why a CU freshman who
>> is majoring in architectural engineering would need a dual boot
>> windows/linux machine instead of just a vista boot? If so, I’ll pass
>> them on to her.

Upgrade to the fastest mac you can.

  #0) You own your machine, not microsoft.

  #1) AFAIK, all of the apple LCD display hardware is 24bit rgb. The
      low-end pc hardware only uses 16bit for driving the display.
      Last time I looked, PC laptops that target high-end multimedia
      and probably have 24bit display were not that different in price
      from a macbook.

  #2) Lower virus infection probability. In all likelyhood,
      many if not most of her classmate's laptops are infected.

  #3) For cad software, 2GB is OK, for small-to-medium models. I have 2GB
      and have actually had over 1GB used with a moderate complexity
      Revit model (windows dual boot).

  #4) Fastest video and CPU you can get. Sketchup, Revit, Archicad
      (and presumambly autocad) really tax the video with 3d modeling.
      I have used the first three programs with 3d models of moderate
      complexity and the real-time 3d shaded display can be severly
      degraded. It even slowed down the instructors $2000 pc laptop.

  #5) Open source software works fine for everything except the cad stuff.
      Saves money: ~$500 for Adobe CS3 education pricing, ~$?? for ms office
      I'm in the M.Arch program at CU Denver and use these for my studio work:
          OpenOffice, Inkscape, Gimp (loads much faster than photoshop),
          dcraw and ufraw for camera files, amarok for transferring mp3s
          to the ipod, Xsane for scanning, Kaudiocreator for ripping,
          and K3b for CD/DVD writing with a gui.