BADASS laptop for Adobe CS5.5... PC or Mac?

[Kemalettin Sert]

MAXX Digital mobile rocket setup

[Subhadip Sen]

Like your tyle Lewis...
But you don't use R3D's through Premier though do you? I seem to be in permanent render.. every time i do a small grade or an effect.
Plus rendering out big AE effects... slow...
RESOLVE through a laptop with no serious video card... slow,
Rendering out quick times for clients.. Slow.. compare to my 12 core tower.
I do like the whole LAPTOP idea though because I work away alot... Love to know how you combat render times.

Working in HD PRO RES is fine..

The solution is simple - use a faster laptop. Much, much faster. Like the one I posted above, such as the Origin EON17-X. If you are coming from the Apple walled garden, think of it like a portable Mac Pro (actually faster in some ways). 2 CUDA accelerated GTX 675M graphics cards (each of these are twice as fast as the workstation Quadro 4000) to speed up your CS5.5 and Resolve (unfortunately as of right now only one of them can be used for each of those two programs for processing at one time) several times over and above the monstrous CPU (which is the same Sandy Bridge-E CPU used by many in their workstations around these parts) and the 4 hard drives / SSDs in RAID. With such a laptop there's no reason to transcode - drop your footage to the timeline, edit, as simple as that. 5K footage is dealt with at 1/2 res real-time easy. Even at 1/2 res it is effectively supersampled for the 1080p screen.

Of course, consider investing in a mobile Rocket if you are rendering more than you are editing. (i.e. rushes etc) All this said, even a Macbook Pro 17 should be good for 1/8 res real-time editing for 5K, or 1/4 res for 4K using Premiere Pro CS5.5.

[Paul J Steinberg]

Well it really isn't a laptop but then it really isn't much bigger than you one...take a look at the Radius EX chassis from Next Computing http://nextcomputing.com/products/po...ions/radius-ex

You can use a regular ATX sized motherboard so you're free to build this almost any way you like. Put an 6 core i7, a GTX or Quadro card in there along with a Red Rocket and you're smoking any laptop out there. There is room for an internal RAID as well + an I/O card if you want HDSDI outputs.

[Will Keir]

With so much power that laptop must get hot.

1/8 res playback is a bit low for my taste. I got a MBP, waiting on a Mac Pro tower if they ever come. This laptop option seems pretty nice. I'm sure you can run some screaming games on it too.

The solution is simple - use a faster laptop. Much, much faster. Like the one I posted above, such as the Origin EON17-X. If you are coming from the Apple walled garden, think of it like a portable Mac Pro (actually faster in some ways). 2 CUDA accelerated GTX 675M graphics cards (each of these are twice as fast as the workstation Quadro 4000) to speed up your CS5.5 and Resolve (unfortunately as of right now only one of them can be used for each of those two programs for processing at one time) several times over and above the monstrous CPU (which is the same Sandy Bridge-E CPU used by many in their workstations around these parts) and the 4 hard drives / SSDs in RAID. With such a laptop there's no reason to transcode - drop your footage to the timeline, edit, as simple as that. 5K footage is dealt with at 1/2 res real-time easy. Even at 1/2 res it is effectively supersampled for the 1080p screen.

Of course, consider investing in a mobile Rocket if you are rendering more than you are editing. (i.e. rushes etc) All this said, even a Macbook Pro 17 should be good for 1/8 res real-time editing for 5K, or 1/4 res for 4K using Premiere Pro CS5.5.

[Jaime Vallés]

Good lord... I just configured a Maingear Titan 17 for $3582 with the following:

Display: 17.3" FullHD 16:9 LED Display (1080p) with Super Clear screen

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 3930K Six-core 3.2GHz/3.8GHz Turbo

Graphics and GPGPU Accelerator: NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 675M 2.0GB GDDR5

Memory: 32GB Corsair® Vengeance™ DDR3-1600 1.5V (4x8GB, SODIMMs)

Hard Drive Bay One: 120GB Corsair® Force GT SSD SATA 6G (w/ TRIM)

Hard Drive Bay Two: 750GB Western Digital 7200 RPM SATA 2.5"

Hard Drive Bay Three: 750GB Western Digital 7200 RPM SATA 2.5"

That positively destroys my current desktop! Man, this is really tempting me to go over to the Windows side... Although would it be wise to wait for Ivy Bridge processors and see what Mac has up its sleeve with the next 17" MBP?

[Jim Hoffman]

Anyone feeling love for the 17" MBP? My 15" just died and I don't think I can change over to PC land yet. so...

[Maz Mawlawi]

Lol...I really don't understand why people are so religious about windows vs Mac...guys seriously...they're just OSes and are very similar to each other...once you run premiere or after effect you won't even notice what OS you're on as they behave pretty much the same. Get the best laptop you can currently get and forget about your "fears"... And If that means switching to a windows laptop then do it. The days of osX is better than windows and vice versa are obsolete! Today you should be open minded enough to use both OSes and realize that they are both excellent.
Having said that, if you trully want good performance, you're gonna have to get a CUDA card...and for now that means a windows laptop....

[Jim Hoffman]

The only "fear" is all the software etc already purchased. Not to mention the compatibility issues with all the existing workflows in place. Boxes are boxes but they need to play nice with each other and the pocketbook.

[Maz Mawlawi]

The only "fear" is all the software etc already purchased. Not to mention the compatibility issues with all the existing workflows in place. Boxes are boxes but they need to play nice with each other and the pocketbook.

Valid concern indeed!

[Jaime Vallés]

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I started this thread. I was leaning heavily towards the Maingear Titan 17 laptop I posted about before, but I just now read that the battery life in only around 35 minutes! I'm not sure I can deal with that. I know it's because it's using desktop components in a mobile chassis, but still...

Any other recommendations for a laptop running Adobe CS6? One with hopefully more than 1 hour battery life?