Vanity-Need Computer Advice as far as a Mac laptop

One problem with RAID 5 configurations. The chance of a sector error screwing things up on a hard drive is one in many trillion. This wasn’t a problem in the past, but it is now that hard drives have trillions of bits on them.

Basically, soon we will reach a point that if one drive on a RAID 5 fails, the odds are realistic that another drive will fail before that failed drive is rebuilt onto a replacement (RAID 5 rebuilds are slow). Going RAID 6 just alleviates the problem, and it too will be surpassed as drives get even bigger.

RAID 10 is better since the rebuild is faster and even if a second drive fails the odds are (on a large RAID 10) that it won’t be the mirror of the one you’re rebuilding. But in either case you’re throwing the dice and don’t have total reliability in case of drive failure.

The days of RAID are numbered for serious use.

Nice list, thanks. I'll be looking up a couple of them. But this did catch my eye:

But, it’s difficult to use and confusing (on the Mac OS X itself) and isn’t necessarily as fully featured as one might want.

It isn't the easiest to configure thing, and it's dumbed down for the average user. But OS X uses the powerful BSD ipfw firewall underneath so it is technically absolutely fully featured, although you have to learn the UNIX command line if you want to get the most out of it. Or you can get WaterRoof, which is a GUI for ipfw, and pretty sweet.

OK, I went into the Apple Store. I felt like I walked into another world! It just was odd. Anyway, it was packed on a Tuesday afternoon. I looked around a little, but didn’t really know what to look for! I may go again, but in the meantime I( have emailed a couple of instructors who are in the animation department. Hopefully, I will hear something from them. I may have really messed up cuz I stopped in a Best Buy and there was an open box MacBook Pro for $1699 instead of $1999. I just couldn’t do it without knowing for sure. If it is still there tomorrow I may get it anyway. I am hesitant cuz I think Best Buy charges restocking fees and so on. Need to be sure of what I am doing and I am the queen of second-guessing myself. lol
Thank you all for your help. Not sure I understood everything that was posted, but there was a lot of great info here!

If you want to do a price comparison and see if you are getting what you think you are getting, use this link...

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

Then, at the top right, there is a “buy-it-now” link. You’ll be able to go through variations that affect the price, and then you’ll see if that machine you’re looking at is priced a lot lower than normal, or is simply a different variation that would be priced at that amount, anyway.

Variations in price will be size of screen (which is the size of the computer, too), MHz of CPU, amount of RAM, size and kind of hard drive, plus the variation between different models of the MacBook Pro as to some of the connectors and whatever else is inside the machine.

Specs and variations...
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs.html
[click the different sizes, at top of page, and you’ll see the variations at the bottom of the page]

One thing I would say here, though. If you want to add more RAM that what is shown for the basic configuration, it’s probably a bit cheaper to add RAM from a good and reliable third-party source. I’ve used the same one (i.e., source) for the last 15 years or so. I should say this another way, too — don’t have Apple add any more RAM, other than their standard configuration. :-)

One more thing, I don’t know if you noticed from another comment that students that are enrolled in qualifying school can get a good discount on Apple computers. I can’t tell you the exact qualifying procedure, but it may be worth your time and effort to check into it and get a substantial discount this way.

And..., you won’t find any drastic differences in the price from one retailer to another retailer as compared to Apple, on the basic configured computer. So, if you find a drastic price difference, then there is something you don’t know (or don’t realize). It’s either that it’s not configured the way you think it is, or it has been returned and it’s being re-priced out of that consideration, or it was from last year (a close-out) and the newer models (this year’s) have different configurations and specs, so the older one may not be what you think you are getting (as compared to this year’s models). Now, any one of those reasons may be fine for you — but you should know what the reasons are and you should be able to decide it’s okay for you.

And a last thing here, and a more personal comment and opinion..., I would never buy anything from Best Buy, except the simplest things and only if it’s on sale for a drastically reduced price... LOL... They are the worst retailer ever, as far as I’m concerned. But, that’s me... :-)

Yeah, I can see there are some “use problems” with FileVault, but if one knows about it, it may still be useful. If I were carrying around a laptop and using it elsewhere, I would like to have FileVault activated. You can turn it on and then off, too. If it were stolen, FileVault would keep your information locked up forever, as far as anyone else was concerned (i.e., the thief).

Also, if I were sending the computer in to be worked on, I would like to have FileVault activated.

But, in addition to the above, the reason why I mentioned PGP was to give another alternative to keeping your information locked up. :-)

Oh, and about using USB, that’s one reason why I like having FireWire... :-)

Macs are worth the additional cost. The Mac OS X operating system is much better quality than Microsoft’s, and Apple has good customer support. If necessary, Macs can also run Windows, so it is the universal computer.

One problem with using a MacBook Pro for animation is the built-in screen (unless the specs has changed recently). Like most laptops, the screen can display only six bits of color information per channel (red, green, blue), which can result in Mach-band effects on the graphics. The better-quality displays for desktop computers can display 8 bit per channel, or 12 bits for high-end professional models.

I believe that Apple recently introduced a matte-screen option for the MacBook Pro, and I’d recommend that over the glossy screen for professional graphics work.

Another problem with animation is that it is computationally expensive, and a laptop is not the ideal hardware to run animation software on, especially photorealistic software like Maya, raytracers, etc. An economical way to work around that problem is to use Macs to design the animation, then get some cheap Linux computers and network them together into a “render farm” for generating the video output.

"This is because most Mac users have no protection at all and don’t bother scanning for security threats."

Most Mac users are probably running with private IP addresses, therefore, they have some protection. A built-in firewall is available on Mac OS X, but it is usually not needed, and it is switched off by default.

"I have a family member with a Mac that had a keystroke logger loaded up on her system and her accounts started to be broken into. She wound up having to not only entirely replace her computer, but had to change her online account passwords, all of her account numbers and passwords for bank and credit card accouts, and her email accounts. Big hassle and a big financial concern. I think I only heard part of the story of what happened."

Keylogger programs are sold for Macs. They are used typically to spy on a spouse. With physical access to the target machine, it is not difficult to get it installed. The results are sent back through e-mail. But Mac keyloggers are generally not found in the wild.

I've been running Mac OS X wide open for over ten years, with no viruses, worms or spyware - and no antivirus software. Maybe it will be necessary someday, but for now, there is no reason to install antivirus software on a Mac. Currently, the main threat is trojan horses, but even that is such a tiny threat that Mac users generally don't need to worry about it. Just use some common sense about opening e-mail attachments and heed the warnings when the Mac says it is about to start executing a program downloaded from the Internet for the first time.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.