Laptop for student

R

Racoonxxx

New Member
Hi, im new to macs, never used them before, always was a windows guy...i will be studying in college and require photoshop, illustrator and a bunch of other programs..all my friends says macs are the way to go...i have a limited budget of barely 1.2k but i was offer for way wayyy less money El Capitan (which i dont have a clue what it is..if its the model of the OS or anyother thing) mid 2009 yes...2009 2.53ghz core duo 4gb ram ddr3 nvidia 9400m 256mb OS> 10.10.4 if i were told this is a windows i would say this is a big NO NO..but i dont know about mac specs so....i would like to know if this is good at this time, for what i would require as a graphic designer student for the couple of years
 
Technology is improving rapidly. Any computer, be it PC or Mac that is eight years old is going to be pretty obsolete. The minimum specs for the Adobe suite go up almost every year so you may struggle, especially if you dabble in something like After Effects or video editing. It's likely to affect your productivity all-round.

So personally, I would not recommend it. Don't fret though, £1200 is more than enough to get a system suitable for your needs. If you buy a Mac, bare in mind that you will be paying more for the same specification on a PC, but you can get a student discount at the Apple store!
 
That's pretty much what I have.
I had to get a quick replacement when my old 17" MacBook Pro died.

I tend to work mainly in Ai so it tends to run fine for me but recently I got sent a .PSD which was licking on for 300mb and I found it a bit chuggy.
Think I only paid £350 for it so I can't complain.

As for the whole PC v MAC thing.
I don't think there's that much difference these days but I've always used Mac's so I tend to stick with them.
 
I wouldn't listen to your friends. They're probably telling you to go the Mac route because they want to justify their expenditure to themselves. Buy what you can afford or what you prefer. Mac owners can be pretty snobbish at times but the outcome is the same regardless of the machine used. I had a mid-2010 Macbook with slightly better specs than the one you mentioned and had to replace it because I found it just too slow to be able to handle Creative Cloud and other apps. The GPU inside was also pretty poor and couldn't even render WebGL 3D in browsers. This isn't a necessity for most people, but as a web designer, I need to be able to at least experience current web technologies. You'll also find it's sluggish without an SSD.

Personally, I much prefer the Mac OS to Windows 10 since it seems just a little bit faster and more intuitive in a lot of places, though you can get pretty much all industry software and some indie stuff on both platforms. I honestly never have any desire to urge people to buy a Mac/Macbook over a Windows PC or laptop. It's personal choice really, and plenty of agencies use Windows because they can build a suite of workstations that do specific tasks well for a fraction of the price for stock Apple products.

Whilst the build quality of Macs still feels very high, Apple are constantly removing features and 'innovating' in ways that actually annoys and infuriates a lot of people. If it was a toss-up between a Mac and a PC I'd build a PC that does exactly what I need, but I prefer Macbook to pre-built Windows laptops. If I had the funds though, I'd definitely opt for the MS Surface Studio. This looks exactly like how I feel you should be designing on screen. Using your hands, not a mouse. When these come down in price I'll probably look to switch in a few years times, if they're still making them.


FYI, El Capitan is the OS version (I believe it's the current one). Apple tends to change up their naming conventions every so often. Previously it was wild cats (Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion, etc), now it seems to be national parks/geographical (Yosemite, El Capitan…). No idea who thought those up.
 
I really wish people would say country and currency when wanting recommendations.... the OP's IP is in panama meaning 1200 could be balboa which would be the equivalent of £1000 which can make a huge difference in what we can suggest...

As to the laptop, honestly the software you list is pretty much the same on windows and os-x and it's just the operating idiosyncrasies where things get a little different. Hardware in apple laptops is pretty much the same as in windows, they all use x86/x64 cpu's, they all use standard consumer gpus (or rebadged 'professional' versions such as the radeon pro). Now the OS does seem to use less power than windows so in that respect it's slightly better but the rest is pretty much the same.
Also personally feel that apple laptops are overpriced for what you get, especially with the 'brexit' tax (it's more than the drop in currency conversion) they've stuck on like a lot of other companies.

I'd personally be looking at a surface pro 4 (you can get the i5 8gb models for around the price mentioned) if you can get one in your country as to me that's a much more 'graphic design' focused device than a macbook.
 
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