Re: [NTLK] OT: Which to Keep? G4 PB or Pismo?

I can relate to this question as I've been in the same boat for a
while. I've done AutoCad 2K in VPC for a few years. It took some
tweaking but I managed to get it running pretty well. Although speed
difference was noticeable every now and again, the biggest con of VPC
is no USB support. It sucks! The key to a good setup is of course
having a lot of RAM. On my iMac (which only had 768MB of RAM) I would
usually turn off non essential apps in OS X to squeeze out all the
power I could. I also set up VPC (running Win98) to be as bare bones
as possible and that seemed to work fine. I can't comment on doing
any heavy 3D stuff in VPC but if you're in EE you probably don't have
to worry about that stuff anyway. Depending on the speed of your PB,
I think you could wing it until spring in this mode.

Getting a POS PC box is good suggestion too, I'd also recommend
looking into a simple MacBook as well. You can pick up a decent
refurbished MacBook for under $1k these days. If you trade in your G4
the cost of a new MacBook should be within reach. The only problem is
going to be getting Windows which I find ridiculously expensive in
the boxed version. With all the bad rep Windows seems to have, I was
amazed that Microsoft still commanded $150+ for the full version, and
I was complaining about my $60 student edition of Tiger. Another
thing I like about the MacBook's is its small screen which makes it
very compact to carry around. Since it also includes hookup for an
external monitor you could pick up a cheap LCD to connect to it at
home. I've seen 19" Widescreen LCD's for sub-$200 and smaller models
are can be had for ~$100. I think this would create a nice setup to
do your work. Good luck!

On Aug, 27, 2006, at 22:04 , Paul Curtis wrote:

> AutoCAD is going to run slow on any Mac, it has specifically been
> written to
> take advantage of x86 architecture...
>
> I have AutoCAD 2.1 - 14 and have used it since 1985 and taught many
> years of
> advanced design with it, not to mention way too many lines of
> AutoLisp...
>
> I would pick up a cheap pc box with a Core 2 Duo or and AMD X2 with
> a decent
> graphics card.
>
> Here's one example,
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16883103005
>
> I'm sure there are better deals out there, but this would run it
> fine, not
> like emulating Windows on a Mac.
>
> My 2cents,
>
> Paul

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