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What's on Your Desktop?


MatthewSchenker
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I have a 2006 Mac Pro that still is chugging along just fine as a primary. A dual xeon running 6TB with a 512 SSD for boot and apps.  Has 16GB and I upgraded the video for the Apple 30" and  24" . Both need to be replaced now the colors are shifting and not accurate enough anymore. Good work space though.  Have a 17 MBP for mobile.  Have considered getting a new 15, and running dual 27's via thunderbolt but can't make up my mind between that and waiting for the new MacPros due this year. 

Regarding a raid array, while you can have redundant storage in a raid box, you need to have a redundant backup of whatever your primary storage is (think theft or natural disaster). I archive off an external raid array out to 2TB drives that go off site.  Hot files are backed up to the cloud.

Why so much data?  I have alot of media (raw image files from photography and video) that needs to be archived long term. 

I grew up on Unix (BSD and Solaris) so when OS X was released I moved my personal computing over from MS platforms. Now I have my cake (unix under the hood) and can eat it too (apps).  

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  • 2 months later...

considered to switch to macbook pro last month as i needed a new laptop. but the closed apple ecosystem, the high price, and that there is nearly no chance to repair or upgrade a retina macbook (glued together everything) were deal breakers for me. that's why i'm still on windows - unusual for a person in the creative and media business ...

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  • 9 months later...
there is nearly no chance to repair or upgrade a retina macbook (glued together everything)

Just wanted to share a little story of my old Dell laptop. It was 9 years old and still running quite adequately, with only one RAM upgrade in its lifetime. I was spending a working holiday in Mexico for a month when the graphics card decided to pack it in one week into the trip. All I got on the screen was some random fuzzy lines. Not looking very promising :)

A quick google, a screwdriver, some aluminum foil, a kitchen oven, and 15 minutes later she was good as new and is still working 2 years later! No chance of fixing something like that on a Macbook these days.

FYI, I am on a Mac now and I have finally wrangled it into submission and am generally happy. Two things I shelled out for were an SSD and a matte screen - I know glossy are all the rage, but the reflection off the glass drives me nuts! Am I the only one?

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considered to switch to macbook pro last month as i needed a new laptop. but the closed apple ecosystem, the high price, and that there is nearly no chance to repair or upgrade a retina macbook (glued together everything) were deal breakers for me. that's why i'm still on windows - unusual for a person in the creative and media business ...

Interesting what you said (many months ago) about the media business.

On the audio front, though many still err towards Macs, there has been a steady move to windows - ProTools, which used to be Mac only, has now built a very large windows market. And Logic (which was bought by Apple) seems to have lost favour at least in part because they no longer support windows. 

Part of this is pricing (Macs are very over priced at top levels) but also that you can build some pretty huge PC systems! Mind you, even domestic, lowerpriced PCs can run most software-only DAWS quite happily now.

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Interesting what you said (many months ago) about the media business.

I'm on mac in the meantime. Happy but not enthusiastic. Some things are better than with Windows, some not. Surprising enough, I find the pricing reasonable now for what you get.

 Just wanted to share a little story of my old Dell laptop.

Did upgrade my old T61 IBM notebook to a new SSD in seconds. No way to do something similar with a Mac. But after 8 years its life-cycle has come to an end. Had to replace it. Don't mind the glossy screen on retina MBP, it's ok.

On the audio front, though many still err towards Macs, there has been a steady move to windows

Could this have to do with the increasing integration between digital mixing consoles and DAWs? 

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@totoff

Not particularly. Unless you are investing in top end solutions like Nuendo and Nuage - but even then, the DAW part of the system is standalone and can run on either Mac or Windows, as far as I know (though they tend to illustrate it with a Mac)

The original upsurge in Mac use in audio has two historical events. ProTools , which was originally Sound Designer and ran on Atari, was bought by Avid and developed for the Mac only. Logic (another Atari original as Creator), ran on Mac and Windows till Apple bought it and effectively threw away 50,000 users who were on Windows. The migration to Cubase in Europe was quite spectacular!

Also, with many video formats being developed associated with Mac, it made sense to keep them all joined together.

But the industry is not so obviously streamlined now and networking between different systems is not the same headache as previously. So people tend to go for the system they like, or the software runs well on. 

I am on Windows using Cubase at home (and Nuendo at a studio I am still involved with). But my system is not exactly off the shelf with 64mb ram, 6 core intel and 2 TB of SSDs (plus 6 TB of HD). Then there is additional DSP furnished by other boards and interfaces. 

It can get quite warm in my office when I have it all running! :)

I don't overclock, by the way (which some home users do) - there is absolutely no need (I have never run out of CPU and Ram) and if I really want to fry an egg I have a nice new Smeg cooker downstairs.

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I'm on a custom built PC that I just set to automatic overclocking to see what it did. It boots up into Windows 8.1 in about 6-7 seconds from a cold start which is nice :)

Core i7 processor @ 3.5ghz (boosts up to 4ghz on occasion), 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD, ASUS GTX 660 OC graphics card (for games, in case the spec wasn't already spelling that out!) and a REALLY quiet Fractal Design R3 case (it's really heavy as it's lined with what appears to be dense, 5mm rubbery material that absorbs the sound you usually get from a base unit).

I like it because it's fast and quiet and cost me ~£1,000 (even less nowadays if I stuck to the same spec).

Strangely, I spend less on monitors. I see expensive monitors in use all the time but since I don't get any eye strain on my 24" Samsung that was pretty entry-level a few years back I don't see the need in upgrading.

I spend more on keyboards and mice though. I find these really comfortable to use and with the amount of time I spend using them I don't mind spending the extra on them:

I suspect ryan would dislike this keyboard as it's a bit too modern :D

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Well, much to my surprise I actually found a white ergonomic keyboard in the uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Perixx-PERIBOARD-512W-Ergonomic-Split-Keyboard/dp/B0076KUTKS/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1391725524&sr=1-2&keywords=perixx+ergonomic

I had been looking for one for years - I like ergonomic, but I hate black keyboards. Really bad when you are a writer trying to churn out 10,000 words.

It is a US board, but with some custom keyboard profiles and a cheap pack of sticky labels, I have forced it to be UK

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I have a 2010 Macbook Pro with 8GB ram hooked up to a Dell 24" screen. I can't stand Apple's mice so I use a Logitech M705. Hanging of the MBP is a 1TB drive just for time machine backups and a 1.5TB 'work' drive. Connected to the Mac Mini is a 1TB LaCie NAS (which has been a pain in the arse). Complicating things I have a synch program that copies directories between al the various drives I have lying about so I have at least three copies of everything.

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I forgot to mention as I saw it asked earlier in this thread, I've had bad experience with DROBO (so bad I can't remember what went wrong now!).

QNAP is a fairly good solution - problem is it has fallen over when I've used one at the point it got full. No warning, just RAID failure.

The flavour of the year for me in NAS backup is Synology - lovely interface, easy to set up. You can run a webserver on it so you could have a script on your sites perform backups to compressed files then have this box just go and fetch the files via FTP in a PHP script. Leave it in a cupboard and you're sorted :) You could of course do the same thing via your PC/Mac I imagine after they boot every day, but there's something nice about being able to set something like this up and just leave it going. They power down the disks when not in use so are reasonably power-efficient, and if you get a 2-bay model in RAID you're covered from data loss. Put one in your house or a relative's house as well and you're doubly covered.

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I'm on a custom built PC that I just set to automatic overclocking to see what it did. It boots up into Windows 8.1 in about 6-7 seconds from a cold start which is nice :)

Core i7 processor @ 3.5ghz (boosts up to 4ghz on occasion), 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD, ASUS GTX 660 OC graphics card (for games, in case the spec wasn't already spelling that out!) and a REALLY quiet Fractal Design R3 case (it's really heavy as it's lined with what appears to be dense, 5mm rubbery material that absorbs the sound you usually get from a base unit).

I like it because it's fast and quiet and cost me ~£1,000 (even less nowadays if I stuck to the same spec).

Strangely, I spend less on monitors. I see expensive monitors in use all the time but since I don't get any eye strain on my 24" Samsung that was pretty entry-level a few years back I don't see the need in upgrading.

I spend more on keyboards and mice though. I find these really comfortable to use and with the amount of time I spend using them I don't mind spending the extra on them:

I suspect ryan would dislike this keyboard as it's a bit too modern :D

I've got the same case ;) I love the design although the front ports broke somehow...

Also a logitech fan I have a Logitech G510 and a Logitech G9x mouse.

They're for gaming mainly but I love the macro's on the keyboard.

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A quick google, a screwdriver, some aluminum foil, a kitchen oven, and 15 minutes later she was good as new and is still working 2 years later! No chance of fixing something like that on a Macbook these days.

FYI, I am on a Mac now and I have finally wrangled it into submission and am generally happy. Two things I shelled out for were an SSD and a matte screen - I know glossy are all the rage, but the reflection off the glass drives me nuts! Am I the only one?

I had the same experience with a 1st generation Powerbook 5300, broken power connector solidly soldered back to the motherboard by a tech junkie on a street stall in Bangkok.

My recent MacBook Pro with matte screen suffers a NVIDIA error since upgrading to Mavericks. I found out there's a free repair program from Apple. It took me some strong arguments to still get that for free while my warranty was 35 days due.

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My recent MacBook Pro with matte screen suffers a NVIDIA error since upgrading to Mavericks. I found out there's a free repair program from Apple. It took me some strong arguments to still get that for free while my warranty was 35 days due.

Interesting to hear given that I am probably just about to upgrade from Lion to Mavericks. I avoided Mountain Lion, but now there is starting to be too many things that won't work on Lion that I am being forced into it. I can't say I am thrilled about the dumbing down on my desktop that seems imminent, but maybe I am making too much out of what I have read on the subject.

Do you know if this was a common error for these machines when upgrading to Mavericks, or just an unlucky situation? 

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Do you know if this was a common error for these machines when upgrading to Mavericks, or just an unlucky situation? 

Adrian, check this link to see if your MacBook Pro falls into the problem category, it's mostly mid 2010 models, I bought mine Dec 2010. http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4088

And here's a discussion about the NVIDIA errors and important message if your warranty is due. https://discussions.apple.com/message/23620455#23620455

I upgraded to Mavericks on 22 Nov 2013. Since then I had frequent "your Mac restarted because of a problem" errors and sometimes my screen wouldn't wake up when opening the lid. It happened mostly with graphic applications and scanning. If you're near an Apple shop they supposedly can do a hardware test. It seems that the error can be dormant but get worse under Mavericks.

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Thanks for that info. I have a late 2011 model so hopefully ok, but I did see some people in that thread with 2012 models also reporting issues. Not exactly encouraging. Anyone else have any Mavericks experience to share?

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Marty, that's what I have all the time now. Switched off NVIDIA with gfxCardStatus and using Intel only.

Andrew, not so fantastic Wi-Fi is something else I'm experiencing since Mavericks. I see more of my neighbours' networks than my own.

Anyway, it's off to the Apple Service Center tomorrow.

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