The Artist's Technological Plight - Purchasing a High-end G5 or a Powerbook Instead

If you're an artist, you know that the digital revolution has, well, revolutionized all sectors and aspects of that broad category known as "art".  It is nearly impossible to live as an artist without a computer.  Even if it's simply to check emails, surf the internet, or use a word processor.

As a recent graduate of Art Center College of Design in illustration, I have seen a wide spectrum of computer using artists.  It ranges from a friend who just recently bought his first computer (a laptop), to artists who were on the verge of being techno wizards (my definition of techno wizard:  a computer programmer).  But, all these artists were using computers in the computer lab, so my conclusion is, no one can escape the computer!

This brings us to the next question:  what type of computer shall I buy?  It's kind of like buying a new car.  1) You make a prioritized list of what you're looking for.  2) You go and see what's out in the market, do your research and perhaps test-drive a computer at your local techno-store.  3) You reconcile your prioritized list with your budget and with your selected range of choices (really the tough part).

Here's how my computer odyssey went.  I had bought a G4 Powerbook a year before, a top of the line 1.67 Ghz single processor and added 1 gig of ram to bring it to 1.5 gigs, with an 80 gig hard drive.  Sounds pretty good right?  Well I soon found out that computers continue to evolve exponentially; not long after Apple came out with the dual processer G4 with a faster processor speed.

The problem with my G4 was that, although it ran Photoshop and Illustrator quite well, it was considerably slower running memory-eating applications like Aftereffects and Maya.  I was in the computer lab using Dell workstations running on Windows NT, and comparing the speed of Maya on the Dell and my G4 was like comparing a greyhound and a chihuahua.  The Dell ran circles around the G4, running every operation faster and smoother.  Though I had bought Maya for my laptop, I ended up working in the computer labs to save time and sanity.