Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Based on my friend Nicolas' experience, I decided to ignore the negatives and go with my gut feelings and splurged on a new 17" MacBook Pro.
I'm travelling to Houston Texas to get my friend Rodney to some top cancer specialists at MDAnderson cancer Center. So I needed a way of working on my images without packing up my tower and Eizo. I think the new PowerbookPro is going to be perfect!
I also got Parallels to allow me those few PC only progams that some people rave about. In additon I ordered an adapter for airline travel. It appears to also work as a car adapter too and is a bargain for about $57.
Today I bought a Tumi padded bullet proof computer case which has enough room to also carry my Macsales.com dual SATA enclosure, a slick black box I call the "Black Beauty", which it is, and inside it 2 500GB 5yr warrantied Seagate SATA drives.
The computer recognizes them for evaluating their health using S.M.A.R.T. So how does one do this with a laptop with only USB 2 and Firewire?
Introdicing the Temp SATA Express 34. This is a serial ATA host adapter for the MacBook Pro's Expresscard/34 slot. This smaller slot has rendered all my previous PCMCIA cards for firewire, USB etc all useless to me! Since I have migrated to SATA, this card opens the way to be able to take with a SATA drive to be able to do heavy work anywhere. One can even use the port multiplying ability to have via each SATA port in the Sonnet Tempo™ Express Card. This means one can have a 5 Bay enclosure with 5 SATA drives (say 750 GB each) from both ports, for a total of 10 x750 GB!
Now why would you need all this, I don't know, but one could make a very fast redundant raid for CS2, audio or HD video work!
For casual travel, I have for back up 1 Smartdisk 40GB compact flash storage unit, 1 60GB ipod with a color screen and 1 80 GB firewire drive. So for photoshoots I can be sure I have all the redundancy I need.
I was pleased with how MacConnection gives a $150 cashback coupon (yes that bloody coupon) and parallels is free after sending in two coupons.
The computer is powered by the usual small white power brick which auto senses voltage. The plug end can be switched for European style connectors and there's also a cable supplied if one needs further length.
The power cord is held snugly by a magnetic break away connector. This already proved useful as I picked up the computer to show something on the screen and the cord pulled off. I have twisted several cables of my Aluminum powerbooks, so this is a great idea!
The computer starts very fast and auto configures rapdly to my .mac account retrieving all the mail. I was so surprised to see myself in a picture at one point and then remembered that there's a built in camera in the bezel above the screen.
My impression is that this is the very best laptop I've owned. The keyboard has a wonderfull tactile feedaback and the screen, matte, is perfectly wonderful.
I've yet to load CS2, but after iViewMedia Pro, CS2, Lightroom etc are on board I'll really know how this puppy sings..or not!
Asher
I'm travelling to Houston Texas to get my friend Rodney to some top cancer specialists at MDAnderson cancer Center. So I needed a way of working on my images without packing up my tower and Eizo. I think the new PowerbookPro is going to be perfect!
I also got Parallels to allow me those few PC only progams that some people rave about. In additon I ordered an adapter for airline travel. It appears to also work as a car adapter too and is a bargain for about $57.
Today I bought a Tumi padded bullet proof computer case which has enough room to also carry my Macsales.com dual SATA enclosure, a slick black box I call the "Black Beauty", which it is, and inside it 2 500GB 5yr warrantied Seagate SATA drives.
The computer recognizes them for evaluating their health using S.M.A.R.T. So how does one do this with a laptop with only USB 2 and Firewire?
Introdicing the Temp SATA Express 34. This is a serial ATA host adapter for the MacBook Pro's Expresscard/34 slot. This smaller slot has rendered all my previous PCMCIA cards for firewire, USB etc all useless to me! Since I have migrated to SATA, this card opens the way to be able to take with a SATA drive to be able to do heavy work anywhere. One can even use the port multiplying ability to have via each SATA port in the Sonnet Tempo™ Express Card. This means one can have a 5 Bay enclosure with 5 SATA drives (say 750 GB each) from both ports, for a total of 10 x750 GB!
Now why would you need all this, I don't know, but one could make a very fast redundant raid for CS2, audio or HD video work!
For casual travel, I have for back up 1 Smartdisk 40GB compact flash storage unit, 1 60GB ipod with a color screen and 1 80 GB firewire drive. So for photoshoots I can be sure I have all the redundancy I need.
I was pleased with how MacConnection gives a $150 cashback coupon (yes that bloody coupon) and parallels is free after sending in two coupons.
The computer is powered by the usual small white power brick which auto senses voltage. The plug end can be switched for European style connectors and there's also a cable supplied if one needs further length.
The power cord is held snugly by a magnetic break away connector. This already proved useful as I picked up the computer to show something on the screen and the cord pulled off. I have twisted several cables of my Aluminum powerbooks, so this is a great idea!
The computer starts very fast and auto configures rapdly to my .mac account retrieving all the mail. I was so surprised to see myself in a picture at one point and then remembered that there's a built in camera in the bezel above the screen.
My impression is that this is the very best laptop I've owned. The keyboard has a wonderfull tactile feedaback and the screen, matte, is perfectly wonderful.
I've yet to load CS2, but after iViewMedia Pro, CS2, Lightroom etc are on board I'll really know how this puppy sings..or not!
Asher