Alot of poeple use mac and prefer it to a pc, but im a pc person so im not like that

Test out a powerbook and see if you like it

i'm a huge mac advocate (they sign my paychecks). but if you are only going to use the laptop for ssl, i'm not so sure i would trade your toshiba in for the powerbook. i've got a 1.25 powerbook and it works good for ssl, but i have had some crashes. it seems like ssl runs a little smoother on pc laptops (still not sure why or if this is even a 100 % true statement).

if however, you are looking for a better computer experience overall, "once you guy mac, you'll never go back."

I've also asked myself the same question BadCompany, but personally, since I don't have much Mac experience, I'd be at a disadvantage to troubleshoot any issues *if* I ever encountered any on a Mac. I don't know about you, but if for some reason at a gig the laptop begins to act up, I would be much more comfortable tinkering with Windows than I'd be with OS X.

But Macs never give trouble, right? So you shouldn't have anything to worry about. :-)

Oh dear, not _another_ of these threads... :'-(

You might want to stick to the PC because it uses less CPU power than a Mac for some reason. Don't know why becuase this isn't an issue with other cross platform software.

Actually I'm not sure if I'm correct on this one...

not again?

If it isn't broken... don't try to fix it.

that is always good advice to follow! :) ...but some people just like new toys! I will admit I am one of those people.

If at all possible, try before you buy.

Mac looks twice as good as a PC for a double price,
PC outperformes MAC for half the price :)

they certainly do look good... ^_^

I prefer a Shuttle XPC solution. The drawback is you have carry around a seperate TFT (though Shuttle also has a nice, expensive portable TFT). But the good side is you can upgrade/maintain/repair your hardware, have 1 or 2 200 Gig 7200 rpm harddrives, low latency PCI sound card and a lot of RAM for half the price of a decent laptop.
I installed it dual boot and made an image of the XP partition to Linux so can restore XP fully in about 5 minutes when it really screws up :)

I love my Macs and I wouldn't want to work with Windows for anything. But you say you want to switch from PC to Mac - WHY? You need a reason to make the switch. I could tell you all the reasons why I love Macs, but another person could tell you the same about their PC. It's not going to get you anywhere.

macs look cool and impress girls when youre playing live - thats why i use one. otherwise pc's are mostly better.

This is a quote from another thread like this (it's from SSL Guru Steve W.):
I myself got a 1.25 Ghz Powerbook G4, and it's runs just smoothly. Heating is a pretty common bit, so I got an iBreeze. With that, everything runs great. I've got no problems whatsoever, no crashing, no freezing up etc. Just try one out for yourself, maybe you'll be like me: I used to mingle on PC's for 10 years before making the switch, because the system just convinced me. But you'll have to feel it yourself. (Oh yeah, don't forget to buy an external power unit for SSL or it won't work...)

Sounds like an mac specific problem, but it isnt. I had to buy an external power supply as well, and I am on Windows.

well there is the reason i gave in the first post.. i want a smaller notebook... would the size to power trade off be good/bad ? like i said i have no issue @ all w/ my toshiba except its bulky...

another reason is that - i'm a computer guy and love to work on computers... mostly linux... i really love the idea of using a terminal... the windows terminal is worthless to say the most... so I'm leaning to get this laptop off of windoz for a unix breed... and b/c they dont make SL*nix I'm stuck using windows... I'm not saying that windows isnt a good OS... i like it its a very powerful OS and stable too, but i like to have more interaction w/ the operating system on my computers... its just more fun... and im thinking that macs will be more fun than pcs in that aspect... but if the MAC is going to drag ass while im spinning on SL then i dont want it b/c my toshiba could take a morter attack durring a set and keep going :P

Well if you put it that way...

PC notebooks have higher clock speeds, but Powerbooks are plenty powerful to run SSL. And if size is important, the 12" powerbook is very attractive. I have one of those neoprene sleeves for it, and I just toss it in my record bag. Even the PSU is very well designed and compact.

You have to choose which OS you want to use, but rest assured a 1.33 ghz can run SSL with power to spare.

I dumped my PC in favor of a Powerbook back when I was doing Final Suck thing....however I wish I hadn't. My PC ran so much faster than this thing and I've had minor cosmetic errors with them (the case warps a little). When I took it to apple to get them to replace or repair it they said that the case warping is natural (bunch of bullshit). Personally I would go with a Toshiba or Acer, they look sweet and have the power to make good with SSL and other apps.

Course I'm a 3d Animator so I need a workhorse in what ever I do (SSL runs perfect on my 12" PB though.)

If you are looking for the best Desktop 'NIX and you can afford it, then you should look at the Mac, most people primairly avoid it because of the cost, but having all the popular software available for your OS as well as being a stable Unix is the best of both worlds, and don't believe the hype about the mhz. I run SSL on a 500 mhz TiBook without any problems. Its all about having choices.

I thought most 3D animators used Macs?

Why do people always think that? No, most animators are on PC platforms or SGI IRIX workstations. Funny thing, PIXAR uses their own proprietary software on IRIX and they're realtime rendering boxes (used for the animator to playback their stuff in realtime) are all Dell boxes. But the even funnier thing is that Steve Jobs OWNS PIXAR. hahahah.

Not to downplay macs though. I love them, but when it comes to raw realtime 3d performance, they're a swing and a miss below equally priced PC boxes.

Yeah, I thought they had a big animiation app but I guess they just have Motion. So I take it they don't use Final Cut for editing animation? Do they use Mac's more for video editing?

hahaha macs struggle to even render duke nukem

PIXAR? didn't they write Renderman? that's SGI though isn't it.

Yeah as far as games go Mac's don't compare to PC. If you have a decent system you can play games like Halo though and it renders fine. I don't play computer games anymore. I miss the old days of Sierra PRG's. I would use a PC to play some of those games again! I would like to try and build a Mac some day for fun but it will be a challenge.

you could run them in virtual PC... those were good games.

are we talking about space quest and that shit? Id give anything to be able to play those again..... am I on the wrong track here?

It actually look like Sierra games were released on Mac's. Space quest is one of them. I just found a site were you can download a bunch of different ones at mac.the-underdogs.org. Now if I can just figure out how to turn the resolution down low enough. Did you guys see that they are releasing a new Lesuire Suit Larry for PS2?

you would need to run pearPC or similar emulator, and then install a compatible MacOS for those games to run...

motion isn't a 3d animation program--it's more for creating moving text and images--kind of like flash but for video. most big studios have an avid editor however final cut is really an excellent comparable solution for less $$$. bang for the buck, if you want to edit video, a g5 loaded with final cut is damn close to any avid system. i think there's been a few big films made exclusively with final cut though.

as for 3D, Maya's on the mac now which is great. However, plenty of other industry standard 3D programs such as LightWave and 3Ds Max will never come to the mac.

Did you check it out? It look like they are mac versions. I don't know anything about the things you mentioned but are gonna look into them. Thanks!

i dont need a power adapter for my mac...new 12" powerbook.
sorry for bragging.

The thing is, when those games were released, MacOSX was still a twinkle in NexT's eye. They would have been released for system 7 or something. PearPC will emulate the hardware (PowerPC) and then you can install the OS into the emulator and then use the old school Mac OS in a window to play the games in OSX.

It's pretty fun stuff.

Lightwave is on the mac and has been so since 5.5 (they're up to 7 right now). Even though Mac's are running a Unix enviro, and it's much faster in theory, my biggest point is that mac's neither have the CPU power or the graphics power to run these apps effectively (when compared with similar priced PC boxes running XP pro). Max probably won't reach to mac's yet cause they're still solid in the PC gaming area.

As for video editing, you can't beat what's on a mac. I love avid but damn, Apple architecture and video editing programing go hand in hand perfectly. I use Final Cut exclusively where I work and I produce all my demo's with it.

And to answer Josh's Q, yes, Pixar did write renderman and use it exclusively, but it's not for mac's it's for IRIX (SGI's OS). There's a plugin system called PR-tools that goes with Maya so maybe theoretically you could run it on OSX too...I wouldn't wanna try though ;)

Actually Pixar makes a Renderman pro server for OS X, but the actual tools are only made for x86 OS's
renderman.pixar.com

I'm already using a Mac so there would be no use to use PearPC would there?

oops yeh lightwave is on the mac--i was thinking of a different app when i wrote it. it's up to version 8 now.

Well, I should have clarified. They do sell it for Macs, but they, themselves don't use macs to render. They're renderfarm is all SGI stuff. At least last time I talked to my contact they were using SGI's, that was last year sometime.

you would need it unless you plan on doing a full install of some outdated OS though...

So with PearPC you can run any older Mac programs from past OS's?