Boy, lotta considerations in this question. Let me start with what
I'm doing now.
I bought a 15" TiBook last year and got rid of my desktop Mac. The
TiBook is 5 years old, maxed out at a Gig of RAM. The 80G hard drive
runs everything I can imagine needing with 18G to spare, kept up to
date with the most recent version of OSX (Tiger).
Along with it I bought a 19" CRT and a MacAlly iKey keyboard and a
BookEndz dock. The Powerbook was $900 on eBay. These things hold
their value. The monitor was $40, the keyboard $6 and the dock
around $35, (retailing new for $285 but so small a market that every
one they've ever made must be being recycled through eBay and such).
I am very happy with this arrangement. I can function at home as
though I have a desktop - good, calibratable monitor, good keyboard
without those little flattop keys that pop off, and my other imput
devices all USB just plugged in to the Powerbook dock or external
keyboard ports.
I can flip two levers and the Powerbook pops off the dock and goes
into the bag. I do have to unplug the external speakers and remember
to take the power cord with me from the dock, however. And when I
travel I take my Wacom tablet and firewire CF card reader. The Wacom
is USB and I still have an extra USB port if I need it.
After much time of keywording and captioning my master files and
burning DVDs for backup, both on site and remote, I finally decided
that digging the DVD out was sufficiently big a PITA that I'd like to
have my master files more speedily accessible, especially since
Spotlight automatically adds their titles and keywords into its
database, making every image file searchable through Tiger. So I
bought an external 160G Firewire hard drive on eBay which I do not
carry around. It plugs into the dock and lives there.
Now some interesting problems - monitors. They don't match and
neither of them produces quite the correct color for the Fuji/Kodak
machines. Generally, despite bi-weekly calibration on the CRT, but
only with the built-in Colorsync routine, my home adjusted files are
too bright.
Of course, the biggest problem with the TiBook LCD is that every time
you shift your weight in the chair the color is slightly different.
But I survived with it for 2 weeks of sailing shooting in Austria,
and when the pix went up on ISAF 's web site they were the right
color and brightness, as well as when Sailing World published them.
The other problem with monitors is again with the LCD screen - when I
take a slide show into the big white tent where the sailors have
their post-race entertainment, there's no way it can fight the
brightness of daylight, even modified by the white rental tents. I
found the same problem inside the banquet hall at a yacht club - the
full height windows also washed out the LCD screen.
The final problem with the monitor is that the connectors on the dock
are a little dooky and don't always send all three channels of data
to the CRT. Of course I can see that immediately - the screen is
lurid green - and twiddle the position of the TiBook in the dock to
get the monitor to pull in the third channel.
Another problem - input devices. I really cannot make it with the
touchpad. My trackball and now the Wacom tablet, are so deeply
ingrained that I take them with. I tolerate the touchpad for one-day
events, but otherwide the trackball goes along with the tablet, and I
wouldn't dream of attempting to dodge or burn, or even crop, with the
touchpad. Ideally, to me, the touchpad should be a Wacom tablet -
then I'd simply have to carry my Wacom pen around. The pad could be
longer, but not less high, along the lines of the most recent Wacoms
which are "wide-screen". The button could be a long narrow strip
along the bottom of the pad, or I could make myself learn to use the
buttons on the Wacom pen. But I'm just not making it with the
touchpad.
And, as an aside, I should mention that I use keyboard commands
extensively, so I cannot imagine why one needs one of those rolling
wheels on the mouse. I use Page Up and Page Down just fine, as well
as Home and End. And, of course, the arrow keys. Touching the image
file in the slider track with the Wacom pen moves the image up and
down also, and works the same for menus etc.
Finally - temperature. Powerbooks and PC laptops are not cool
operating. One good thing about the dock is that it holds the TiBook
up and lets air in under it where the processor is. But using one in
the lap can be a problem, especially if you have a nice longlived
battery and get seduced into a couple hours on a plane. Your legs
get rather hot and the computer doesn't cool properly. I don't know
for certain, however, that this is more of a problem with my older
Powerbook. I have a friend bought an iMac desktop, the one with the
snazzy steel bracket and external keyboard. Basically she's got a
Powerbook with the monitor built into the surface of the computer
instead of a lid. It's pretty toasty, the CDs come out of burning
hot enough to need a pot holder. The folks on the Mac-L were
concerned about that when the model came out and there is a freeware
utility that polls all the temp sensors built in to the Mac. My
friend's Mac reports temps within normal range, so I guess the CD
temp is not a problem, but I'd like to see some long term studies on
just how hot a CD can get to be before it fails. And if you don't
have a dock, or some way to elevate the computer, you might want to
get a little strip of something - wood, plastic - and prop up the
rear of the laptop when it's going to be in the same place for a long
time.
Also, you might want to keep the cats from napping on it.
In short, this is the best solution for the kind of work that I do, I
believe. So I'm looking forward to getting an IntelBook with its
much improved LCD screen, at least. I doubt that I will ever buy
another desktop computer at this point.
Looking forward to the increased speed, too.
And now that I've finally gotten CS2 and InDesign and Dreamweaver MX
2004, I can let go of OS9 for ever and ever, amen!
--
Emily L. Ferguson
mailto:elf@xxxxxxxx
508-563-6822
New England landscapes, wooden boats and races
http://www.vsu.cape.com/~elf/
http://e-and-s.instaproofs.com/
