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

Come to think of it, the new Mac Mini is a Core Duo, I'm not sure about the
video card as AutoCAD prefers vector based cards (Nvidia's Quadro Series
comes to mind) designed for rendering, rather than the current game based
market. It will also make a big difference as to what version of AutoCAD
you'll be running as they have different graphic requirements.

This may be an avenue to explore...

Paul

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Sent: Monday, August 28, 2006 9:31 AM
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Subject: 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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