Monday, April 18, 2011

Cost of Computers

Now, I suppose one could argue that working on computers is what we do here. So there's a good argument for having a top of the line machine at my desk, if only to keep me from yelling at it.
But really, a 12-core Mac is $5000? Somebody better pay me a lot of money for one of our movies then!
Here's my dilemma -- I need a second Mac for editing/compositing and I need a new PC because my PC's are dying. So a big option for us is to simply get a bad-ass Mac and run it dual-boot.
But then again, you can get a pretty bad-ass PC for about $2500.
+++++

8 comments:

Kangas said...

You can make a bad ass PC for $1500. I'm using a machine that cost me about $1200, and I'm editing Red footage. Roughly 3 times larger than the size of the footage you're editing...

Just saying. Or you can throw your money away on a Mac. (I mean, do you have any kind of idea of what you could PC-wise with 5K????? I'll tell you what, you could make an awesome computer and still have 2K left over for coke and hookers!)

Andrew Bellware said...

Hey, I'm no Apple fan-boy. But I've got good reasons to stay with Final Cut (I've edited two features on Premiere):

1. I need to be able to export OMF files. As far as I know only FCP and Avid can do that.
2. We have to pass off edits to other editors who have Final Cut systems. So that kind of limits us to FCP.
3. At the very highest end, Apple systems aren't that much more expensive than PC's. I can't find a real apples-to-apples (as it were) comparison but a 12-core PC system will run you somewhere close to $5K.
So, yeah, if I could get off the Apple smack I would. I just can't right now. Maybe I can get to a clinic... ;-)

Lindsay Stewart said...

as i need to upgrade sooner than i can afford and as i have a daft amount of cash dollars sunk into software and plug-ins, i am looking into something along these lines...
http://nofilmschool.com/build-a-hackintosh/

Lindsay Stewart said...

Also, this looks like it might prove interesting. haven't looked under the hood but another distribution model is welcome...
http://www.indiepixfilms.com/unlimited

Andrew Bellware said...

@psa Both of those things are worthy of further study.

DAVID FREY said...

The Nofilmschool hackintosh guide seems pretty legit. Don't forget about refurbished computers from apple though.

I've heard several stories of people getting more then they bargained for with apple's refurbished towers. One guy got additional storage and some super graphics cards because apple advertises the tower as what it was factory new, and excludes any additional goodies that had been added.

Andrew Bellware said...

I hackintoshed a Dell Mini once. It was a major pain in the tuchus but ultimately worthwhile to do. So that's getting some serious consideration.
And I've looked at refurbished. Indeed, my 8-core is a refurbished. There are a lot of advantages to going refurbished over brand-new, including the fact that somebody at Apple has actually TESTED the damn computer.

Chance Shirley said...

It really is silly that Apple doesn't make a mid-range standalone computer. $700 Mac Mini or $2500 Mac Pro. Where's the $1500 semi-Pro?