Is new MacBook Pro fast enough?

[Aime]

Please check this out
www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs.html
Will this be fast enough for AC 11 (AC 12) and Artlantis studio 2. I currently run AC 8.1 on a Toshiba laptop (or is that notebook?) P25-S609 and I want to make a switch to AC 11 on a 17" 2.6ghz MacBook pro. I would appreciate any advice thanks.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Thomas wrote:

laszlonagy wrote:
I would put a 200 GB, 7200 rpm (resolution per minute) hard drive, rather than a 250 GB, 5400 rpm drive. It is a bit less space, but much faster, which is more important.

I disagree. Besides Dwight's argument, the 7200 rpm drive runs quite a bit hotter (that's where the battery power goes). My Mac reseller recently sold me a 250 gig 5400 drive, despite that they make more money on the 7200 one. But I trust him. And when I put the MBP on my belly (like now) I thank him. The 5400 is hot enough.

This is the nice thing about a user forum: everyone has a different viewpoint.
I need a fast hard drive (but not in the form of a RAM drive).
Dwight needs long battery.
You need cool hard drives.
And all this does not mean that anybody is wrong.

[Dwight]

I only say what i do because of a bad experience:

Nobody at Apple warns you that getting the fast drive will run half as long on a given battery charge. This is horrifying the first time you rely on their published battery times.

[Chazz]

Dwight wrote:
Nobody at Apple warns you that getting the fast drive will run half as long on a given battery charge. This is horrifying the first time you rely on their published battery times.

I actually asked about this and the business sales rep at Apple said "oh no, the faster drive actually uses less battery because it takes less time to access the data." Amazingly, I fell for it. I love almost everything about my MacBook Pro but the whole battery deal is the weakest link.

It is a source of some embarrassment when I go into the office and need to bring a charger for a 1.5 hour department meeting, while all the Dell people are untethered. 'Course their laptops are the size of volume "L" of the encyclopedia.

[Dwight]

Chazz wrote:

Dwight wrote:
Nobody at Apple warns you that getting the fast drive will run half as long on a given battery charge. This is horrifying the first time you rely on their published battery times.

I actually asked about this and the business sales rep at Apple said "oh no, the faster drive actually uses less battery because it takes less time to access the data." Amazingly, I fell for it. I love almost everything about my MacBook Pro but the whole battery deal is the weakest link.

It is a source of some embarrassment when I go into the office and need to bring a charger for a 1.5 hour department meeting, while all the Dell people are untethered. 'Course their laptops are the size of volume "L" of the encyclopedia.

"A car with a big motor uses less gas because you can drive there faster,"
haha. Idiots.

Tell them you come from France and have an old battery.
"Just have the new one on order."
They will understand.

[TomWaltz]

Aime wrote:
TomWaltz said:

Fast enough for what? The G4 PowerBook was fast enough for some people.

Fast enough to make AC a pleasure

No computer on earth is fast enough for that.

[Dwight]

Take it from the old guy.
Even a slow Archicad beats pointy lead sticks scratching sheepskin.

[Aime]

I didn't know that the speed of the hard drive could seriously impact battery times. Battery performance is quite important to me so I think the slower drive would be best.
TomWaltz wrote:

No computer on earth is fast enough for that.

its either you didn't get me or you are currently residing in Pluto (the wanna be planet). Each version of AC has features that make it unique and a help to the design process. I know there are software issues (bugs) that may affect its use negatively. But I know that the hardware also has a way of negatively affecting its use. That is what I want to avoid as much as possible. My toshiba
runs AC8.1 with no complaints but when I try AC 11 (trial) and select Open GL it just crashes. I don't want to happen with a full license.

[Dwight]

Well, your computer might lack the OpenGL support so essential to current Archicad operation. Have you reviewed Archicad's minimum specified hardware?


As for hard drive - i like the fast drive, but you should also consider getting extra RAM and establishing a RAM disk for your Archicad temporary files.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_disk

[Thomas Holm]

You might take this into consideration too: MacOSX wants plenty of free space on the hard disk to run swiftly. With say 160 GB of data, a 250 G disk still has about 30% free space (it's about 232 gb formatted) and will run at what still feels like full speed. But with the same data on a 200GB disk, you'll have just above 10% free. It will be slooow, despite faster rpm!

[Pete]

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new MacBook Pro 2.4 Core2Duo with 2GB of the plain 667Mhz DDR2 RAM and 200GB drive. (OSX 10.5.2)

I have run AC11 and Artlantis Studio 2 all day long. Pure pleasure. Faster than my 1 year old desktop (Dell Core2Duo 2.4, 2GB Ram, WinXPpro). No crashes.

Since this is my 1st Mac, I am not used to the palettes and workspace differences but I am very satisfied and would recommend it highly.