[lug] Wanted: Recommandations for HDD and Mem Upgrades for CU Freshman
Lee Woodworth
blug-mail at duboulder.com
Tue Sep 18 21:45:07 MDT 2007
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.
More information about the LUG
mailing list