Hello,
I’m entering college this fall and am planning to major in Industrial Design. I’m shopping for a lap top, but I am not quite sure as to what requirements (ie RAM CPU etc) I need. What do I need to look for when I am shopping around? What are the minimum requirements to run programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator simultaneously without any hastle? Oh, and is a Mac required/preferred? Mr friend was telling me how unless if you’re not going to major in graphic design, a PC lap top would be fine. Can you guys help me out? Thank you.
first off, i’m senior ID student, and have two macs, a desktop and a laptop. for the windows only programs that we needed (solidworks, rhino), i used the computer labs. for everything else (adobe apps), i use my macs. if this was a year ago, i would’ve said get a PC laptop. now that macs can boot windows, the choice is yours. just make sure you have a good graphics processor, and lots of RAM, at least a gig.
as for speed requirements, i think any new, moderately-priced laptop has sufficient power to run the 3D apps you’ll use. as for the 2D adobe apps, you wouldn’t even have to worry about it. hell, my main “take to class” computer is a G3 700mhz iBook, with 640mb RAM. i run photoshop and illustrator simultaneously all the time; actually, i was doing it last night, working on a layout. sure, it runs a little slow, and you have to wait for some filters or redraws, but it works, and it’s stable.
good luck!
What ever happened to learning basic design skills (sketching, model making) first?
The ID world is full of Rhino/Solidworks/Maya/whatever experts. What we need moving fordward are people with real design/ideation skills.
Real world deadlines will not always allow time for pretty renderings or shelled plastic parts when trying to convey a concept to non design people you will have to work with and convince your ideas are worth pursuing.
Whatever you buy now will be outdated by the time you finish your sophmore year anyways…
Buy a cheap laptop to email and write up all your reports for the non-ID courses you’ll have to take instead.
i understand your stance, nydesignguy, but in no way did drk87jk say he WASN’T going to learn basic skills. he’s an incoming college student, he has a valid question. i don’t know when you went to school, but most schools these days require or strongly recommend that incoming freshman have a laptop of their own. drk87jk is just looking ahead, and that’s always a good thing to do.
just because the ID world is filled with 3D jockeys, does that mean he won’t need those skills? because there will be other people who can do that stuff? hardly. a good knowledge of all design skills is necessary, and drk87jk will get that in time, as he progresses in school.
"Whatever you buy now will be outdated by the time you finish your sophmore year anyways… "
and what kind of nonsense is this? “outdated”, meaning, that there will be newer stuff out there? i hope so. but does that mean everything before is obsolete? if one can use something, and it performs as intended, it’s not obsolete. hell, solidworks recommends having a pentium processor. PENTIUM! believe me, anything he gets today will still be useful 2 years from now.
like i said, i totally understand your stance, but drk87jk just wants to know what kinda of computer to buy. there’s no need to get on his case for thinking about 3D/2D programs he might use in the future.
Why the rant nydesignguy? I don’t quite get it.
Funny, go into the most forward designers studios’ and what will you see? You guessed it, a pile of computers mixed in with all the other junk we need to make objects.
It’s not a one-or-the-other argument anymore. That disappeared about 10 years ago.
Enough of my own rant-
To the original poster- You really can’t go wrong with either a PC or a Mac. I’d suggest getting a second monitor, at least 19 in and 21 in if you can afford it, and spend some money on RAM- I’d say at least 2 gig- save yourself the frustration. Otherwise don’t worry too much about it.
Also heed nydesignguy’s warning and take as much sketching as you can (force yourself if you’re not into it). You can be a good designer with mediocre sketching abilites, but it’s not as fun, and yes, you will need to be able to convey ideas at 2am in a KTV Bar in Dong Guon China sometime in 2014.
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I was in college in the mid to late 90s at RIT. First year, everyone was required to take “foundation courses” which entailed 2D design, 3D design, drawing and something called Creative Sources. Without those courses, the following 3 years would have not made much sense. None of these courses required a computer.
just because the ID world is filled with 3D jockeys, does that mean he won’t need those skills? because there will be other people who can do that stuff? hardly. a good knowledge of all design skills is necessary, and drk87jk will get that in time, as he progresses in school.
3D skills are less important than a true understanding of the design process and how that fits in with real world business problems like market leadership, profitability and innovation. The later things are what execs look for in Design Managers and Creative Directors - they don’t care about your Maya skills. If you want to be a 3D “gopher” for the rest of your life, by all means start learing Alias ASAP.
"Whatever you buy now will be outdated by the time you finish your sophmore year anyways… "
and what kind of nonsense is this? “outdated”, meaning, that there will be newer stuff out there? i hope so. but does that mean everything before is obsolete? if one can use something, and it performs as intended, it’s not obsolete. hell, solidworks recommends having a pentium processor. PENTIUM! believe me, anything he gets today will still be useful 2 years from now.
Maybe if you ignore the fact that Windows Vista is just around the corner…
As I just said in my previous post, I think most forward designer studios who are profitable also undertand the value of design and what it has to offer to the product development process in the context of business objectives and can articulate that idea intelligently to the rest of the non-design-literate world who ultimately hire them.
I honestly don’t see much of that being taught in design school these days. In fact IDSA just had a blurb about the very exact problem in last Weeks DesignBytes newsletter.