opening up a small studio (industrial / exhibition / packaging) with 5 employees and need new hardware. Currently I’m torn back and forth between Dell and Apple. On first sight Dell seems more affordable (although the price difference between these two, would not be essential) and the 4 hour or next day service seems very good.
What about Apple? Are they really cheaper in the long run? I love the user experience my macbook pro offers me, and since rhino is coming to osx in a reasonable period of time it seams like a nice choice. The workflow includes mainly Modo / Rhino and Maxwell.
I don’t want to kick of a flame war but what would be the pros in cons especially concidering, that I would like to administer by myself as far as possible (I am pretty proficient in Win and OSX)… as well as a file server
So the descision comes down between:
iMacs/Apple Laptops and Mac Servers
Dell Desktops / Apple Laptops and Win or Linux Server
IMO, after having a Macbook, I can’t go back to some cheap poorly-designed PC. Now, there are many PCs that are not poorly designed I would love a ThinkPad, or a Sony, Toshiba, or even high-end Dell laptop. But if you max those out, you are paying the same premium, if not more, than you do for Apple. So after realizing this, I decided to just stick with Mac for now.
Another thing to consider: image. When clients visit your firm, waht do you want them to see? A room full of shiny Apple hardware will no doubt impress more than a bunch of black, nondescript Dell boxes.
I use the Dell Desktop / Apple Laptop combo for my freelance work.
The main reason I use a PC is the availability of other software and cheaper/easier upgradability of the computers. Plus dell’s service is hard to beat. You may want to look into HP’s Z-series of workstations also. I’ve used them at my last two jobs and they performed extremely well (I never used their support so I can’t really comment on it).
I have used Rhino for OSX and while it worked fairly well I still prefer to work on Rhino with my PC. It’s just a matter of preference really. But on most software I find the shortcuts/hotkeys easier to use on a PC.
@tarngerine, what kind of hardware are you (or the studio you work for) using, and why?
@ross nice thoughts. how would you compare the time you use for maintainance between you mac and your pc? i have a similar setup for private use right now (apple laptop / diy-pc) and find the maintainance of my pc to be much higher.
any thoughts on the sort of server i should look at?
but what would be the pros in cons especially concidering, that I would like to administer by myself as far as possible (I am pretty proficient in Win and OSX)… as well as a file server