New laptop

# 1 13-06-2012 , 07:34 PM

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Hi guys, as I'm going to study at university, will need to buy a laptop. Have thought about ultrabook as it's pretty light,handy and got fairly good tech specs and style. However, the dark side is, that I really wonder if it could run Maya, as it got just integrated GPU :/. This is the one that I have been thinking about... ASUS ZENBOOK UX31E.
MacBook Air is the same price as Asus, tech specs are almost the same, just MB Air got better CPU (+ 0.3GHz with TurboBoost),but worse disk as in ASUS it's SSD while in MB Air its just normal SATA II 5400rpm....or should I buy a "normal" laptop ?

Creck

May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow.

Last edited by Creck; 13-06-2012 at 07:57 PM.

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# 2 13-06-2012 , 10:57 PM

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depends on price etc too creck....I was going to get one of these but opted for a tower instead....though in your case not practical

cheers bullet

https://www.affordablelaptops.com.au/...-notebook.html

bullet1968

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# 3 13-06-2012 , 11:32 PM

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thanks for reply bullet,it looks good, but I would like to get something smaller; not larger than 15,6", however as I read few mins ago, keyboard and touchpad on that ASUS sucks :/ so need to choose another one, price should be around 800-1000 USD...

May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow.

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# 4 14-06-2012 , 12:34 PM

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well, has somebody of you ever worked in Maya, Zbrush etc on a laptop ? 'cause I guess 13" is too low to work with 3D stuff .... Thought that I would buy a MacBook Air just for a school and then, after I earn some money, build some cheap desktop for 3D as it's much more cheaper to build one rather than buy a high-end laptop. What do you think about it ?

May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow.

Last edited by Creck; 14-06-2012 at 01:49 PM.

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# 5 14-06-2012 , 01:54 PM

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Another option would be to buy a decent laptop with a small screen and shell out for a nice large monitor that you can plug into when you're home.

-stwert

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# 6 14-06-2012 , 02:46 PM

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do you have some tips ?

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# 7 14-06-2012 , 03:33 PM

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The new MacBook Pro has an SSD drive, as well as a very high resolution screen.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 8 14-06-2012 , 03:42 PM

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Yeah, but I got limited bank :/ max price is 1200USD :/ anyway all I shall do in Maya with notebook is modelling and UV mapping....texturing, lighting, renders and all that stuff will be done at home through desktop... will MBA be able to run this software just for mentioned actions ?

May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow.

Last edited by Creck; 13-07-2012 at 04:08 PM.

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# 9 14-06-2012 , 05:37 PM

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I have a MacBook Pro, but there should be no problems. Autodesk hasn't tested the Air, but the Pro's are certified. The only thing with the Air is that the video card in it is poor, which may cause problems. Seriously, if all you're doing is that kind of stuff, go with the Pro, as you won't need an SSD drive. SSD drives have a limited number of reads/writes that they can perform before it becomes unwriteable. That's why people use them as boot drives, as hardly anything gets written to them, allowing them to have an extremely long life span. I wouldn't recommend using one as your working drive.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Last edited by NextDesign; 14-06-2012 at 05:39 PM.

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# 10 15-06-2012 , 02:41 PM

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thanks for reply nextdesign, but MB pro 13" and air 13" got the same graphic card (intel HD 4000), the only difference is just hard drive....

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# 11 16-06-2012 , 02:22 AM

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Hi Creck; sorry, my bad. The 4000 actually isn't as bad as some of it's predecessors, however you should be aware that anything that's CUDA enhanced won't be able to run on the Intel. OpenCL will, but CUDA is strictly NVidia cards only. This isn't too much of a problem for most people. Since the laptop came out just last week, Autodesk hasn't had time to test the machine for compatibility. However, I've had many Macs, and I've never had a problem with them and Maya. I would still go with the MacBook Pro, as I always feel like I'm going to break the damn thing, but it's totally up to you. Both machines are great.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 12 16-06-2012 , 10:40 PM

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Thanks NextDesign, helped me a lot user added image

... but I still worry about that SSD and its life span, because I really don't want to spend 1.2k USD and after a year it goes wrong. As I am going to attend faculty of information technology at university, there might be a lot of programming exercises, so number of writes to disk gonna be really high :/ .

May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow.

Last edited by Creck; 16-06-2012 at 11:54 PM.

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# 13 16-06-2012 , 11:14 PM

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I don't think the lifespan of SSDs nowadays is really something to worry too much about. I've had mine (albeit as an OS drive) for almost 3 years and no problems. From what I've read, I suspect that you'll be needing another computer for other reasons before you run out of writes.

-stwert

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# 14 16-06-2012 , 11:48 PM

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I'm in university for computer science, and the faculty recommend that students use Macs. Since most universities use Linux as their primary OS, OS X has the same commands and syntax that they'll be teaching. A few people in my program have PC's, and they've caused nothing but trouble.

While Stwert has a point about the computer becoming obsolete before you exceed the maximum number of writes, I don't see any benefit to you by having an SSD drive, as source code files are usually < 8 Kb each; which takes an insignificantly small amount of time to write. They also cost a lot more. (With the MacBook Pro's, you're looking at an extra $200 USD for an SSD drive, that's ~4 times as small. $1000 USD if you want a comparable-size SSD drive)

The 13" MacBook Pro's have traditional hard-drives by default, but you can configure them in whatever way you want online.

I've had my MacBook Pro for close to 2 years now, and have never had a problem. In fact, between my family members, the oldest mac that we still have running is now 8 years old, and it's still running smoothly user added image

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 15 13-07-2012 , 04:14 PM

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well, probably after summer holidays I will order one...thanks for help guys user added image

just one more question to you; is a difference between CPUs at MB Air(1,8Ghz Core i5 /with Turbo boost 2,8Ghz/) and MB Pro(2,5Ghz Core i5 /with Turbo boost 3,1Ghz/) highly noticeable while working with e.g. Maya, except of rendering of course ? Thx

May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow.

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