<p>Our daughter is now at the point where she can confidently say she is going to remain an Arch major -she is a Freshman at Auburn. They require a laptop capable of running standard architecture programs beginning 2nd year (she has a MacBook now which is not capable).
Her dilemma is the screen - to get the glossy or the anti-glare on a MacBook Pro 15". She is not able to compare the two on campus (bookstore only stocks the glossy just like the apple store).
Does anyone have experience with the anti-glare and the color? Which would you want for true color representation for architecture and design?<br>
Thanks!</p>
<p>D2 is a first year at Penn State. Last summer (2010) she was able to compare the MacBook Pro’s two screens side by side at an Apple store and the non-glare, higher resolution screen came out the clear winner. I’m not sure if this year’s MacBooks have the same issue, but it was a no-brainer last summer. YMMV</p>
<p>I have a 17" MacBook pro with the glossy screen, the three others in the office with the same machine choose the non-glare screen. I love the crispness and color saturation of the glossy screen, the non-glare screen looks like a Dell to me…but as you can tell I’m outnumbered 3 to 1 on that opinion.</p>
<p>rick</p>
<p>Why a macbook pro? As far as consumer laptops go, they are top-of-the-line, beautiful and well-enough equipped. I’m also happy with their commitment to balanced processor and graphics power across their product line. But there are laptops on the market that have better build quality, better customer support, better LCD panels, and more powerful hardware.
In a month, the Dell Latitude M4600 and M6600 come out. And for a comparable to mac price (or a few hundred dollars more) you get a matte RGBLED screen that a quick google search reveals is of much higher quality than those found in the consumer-oriented Apple hardware. both of the laptops come standard with high-powered video cards, and, based on the thermal specifications, those graphics cards are much more powerful than what you will find in the MBP. While 2 years ago, hardware acceleration support was negligible in most 3d rendering programs, Autocad, Rhinoceros, and host of others have introduced and widened such support. this could mean hours of time saved rendering for your daughter. Also, these laptops come (again standard) with 3 years of next business day onsite service. Also, while Apple’s laptops come with only 2 dimm slots for memory, these come with 4, allowing for far less expensive memory scaling (16 GB for less than 200 dollars). The M6600 has space for extra harddrives, allowing you to dedicate a solid state drive entirely to rendering, which would reduce the time needed to apply textures and make changes by up to a full magnitude. Also, you can spill drinks on the keyboard, which is irrigated to prevent damage.
These features will also be available on comparable HP workstations a month after Dell’s release. And if you are willing to give up the quality screen, Lenovo will also have a solid machine soon enough.
All of these machines will be giant black bricks, some clad in aluminum, all with internal magnesium structures, and all are far more powerful than the newest MBPs, which are, at heart, consumer devices.</p>
<p>i have a non glossy screen and i love it. yes, the colors are crisper on the glossy, but the colors on the non glossy are closer to the actual print color. you would want to see a truer representation anyway. plus, i can work on my computer in the sun (when there is sun in ithaca) and outside (when it isn’t blizzarding a foot of snow) without any problems or glare. some of my friends love the glossy, but a lot think that it is annoying</p>
<p>non glossy all the way!</p>
<p>She went ahead and ordered the non-glossy. She will just be happy to have a computer that has the programs she is using now vs. working in the computer lab where all of the sudden the computer shuts down and she sees people lose hours of work. Lucky for her she has a mother that is a freak about teaching her kids that the first thing to do when working with a program is to set the save preferences to autosave every 3-5 minutes along with saving in 3 places or more!
Now for decisions on running the programs which do not have mac versions. She has purchased Adobe Creative Suite 5 for Mac, has AutoCad for Mac through her school and purchased Rhino for Windows. Rhino has a Beta version for Mac, but it does not have all the same options as Rhino for Windows. She was considering running it through Parallels until speaking with tech support for Rhino. They no longer offer support for it if it is run through Parallels which means she will have to use Boot Camp.
Revit will be the next decision - anyone run it through Parallels?<br>
I am doing a lot of the questions, setting up, and leg work so that it is ready to go when she gets home on spring break at which time she will not even want to discuss any architecture programs after having a big project due prior to break.</p>
<p>you really dont need revit in school, only in offices. i use rhino for mac, and i think it works fine and as well as the pc program. </p>
<p>just make sure that she has a good harddrive! i regularly save, but it is always that one moment that i dont that my computer crashes or i lose the document. time machine on her mac will be her best friend</p>
<p>Thanks for the information. She is very good about using time machine daily with the Mac book she has. She has 2 new external hard drives now for the new one - one for time machine (1 tb) and another for her photos. In addition to that she saves all her projects on an external, a little USB drive and her designated. “file locker” on the school network.
Seems like over doing it to some, but having a scare of a lost USB got her in that habit.
She is going to also put on rhino for Mac and maybe wait to putmthe windows on if needed. The only reason why she was considering setting it up with it now is that she would not have a clue how to do it once she isnback at school. The nearest apple store is 2 hours from her school. They sell/repair at the campus site but not sure how much of the other.</p>
<p>Just a couple of points. If your daughter wants a job she will be spending increasing amounts of time on Revit. It is what offices are looking for. I just went to a job fair at Kansas, and all the final year projects had been done in Revit. Very impressive. It does not mean you cannot use Rhino, form.z, or sketchup for the conceptual design, but the developed model needs to be done in Revit.</p>
<p>Revit is a memory hog, you can try to run it on Parallels, but I think you would be better off in Bootcamp, 8 gigs of RAM minimum.</p>
<p>rick</p>
<p>She was lucky enough to have waited - the new MacBook pros were just released and the price of RAM reduced. She ended up with 8 gigs of RAM,2.2 GHz quad processor and 500 GB @ 7200 hard drive. Hopefully this will be sufficient for awhile!
The students at Auburn are using it Revit a lot she informed me. She did an internship last summer at Perkins+Will and worked with it. Looks like set up will be through bootcamp. Thank you for all of the information.</p>