----- Original Message ----- From: "Jarlath" <jarlathreidy2@...155...> To: "Inkscape User Community" inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 5:46 PM Subject: [Inkscape-user] OFFTOPIC: Graphic designers computer setup?
This is way offtopic, but I'm learning Gimp and Inkscape and planned on buying a desktop PC soon and then trying to get some work in graphic design - maybe in a printing company for starters.
However, during this learning phase, I've noticed that my 750Mhz / 512MB Ram laptop is doing quite well under Ubuntu.
Do any of you think it would be as practical to work on a laptop exclusively?
Thanks for reading, Jarlath
Hi!
I'd say that laptops aren't really suitable for professional work because of several causes listed here:
- Laptops have awfull (speaking of color rendering accuracy) and small displays. If you want to work professionaly (by this I mean fast and with good accuracy), you need a good, big (19" or 20") display (CRT or LCD, no big difference here...). This is very important when working with color/contrast correction (when preparing photographs for printed stuff, like magazines, packages etc...). Also, a big display gives you more freedom while working with a program having several smaller windows (like Scribus), you won't have to open/close/hide/move anything to free some screen space. And keep in mind that the better your screen will be, the less damage it'll make to your eyes.
- !!! the following applies only if you'll have an important amount of jobs (>100)!!! You need at least 2 physically independent hard drives (not 1 HD divided into 2 or more partitions). Why? because on the first one you'll have the operating system installed among with all the programs/settings etc... On the second one, you'll keep the works (they will then be archived on CD/DVD after everytime after completion). This is very usefull when upgrading the whole operating system, or even the hard disc itself (replacing an older or smaller one with a bigger, faster and brand new one). Thanks to that, you keep the works completely physically separated from the system, it's safer. A laptop with 2 or more hard discs is very expensive, so it's better to have a desktop PC. An external hard disc can do the jod as well though...
- a conventional desktop HD is faster than a conventional laptop HD. The low speed of a hard drive can considerably slow down your work when dealing with bigger files. (7200rpm, 300Mb/sec, and a 8,5ms access time of a desktop PC HD is way better than 5400rpm, 100Mb/sec, and a 12.5ms access time of a laptop HD).
- about RAM: the bigger it is, the best. I'd say anything bigger than 1Gb is OK :)
- about the processor: the most productivity it has, the best it is. Don't just look at speed, an Intel Celeron can be faster (speaking of MHz) than a P4 or a Core Duo, but has 2x, 4x or even 8x less productivity.
- graphic card: do not waste money on "extra super great cards that will increase your gaming experience" or whathever is written on the colorfull box. All you need is a robust, well known chipset (I personally use an NVIDIA Geforce 6200 with 512Mb of video memory). 256 or 512 Mb of video memory is generally more than enough. (If you plan to work under linux, look after a chipset that has robust linux drivers).
HTH :) Molumen
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