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What is the best laptop/pc to get for a new designer?

6 years ago from Ryan Munro, Apprentice Designer

  • Ronja V., 6 years ago

    What type of design work will you be doing? I'm going to guess you are a graphic designer, since you said you wanted to run photoshop and illustrator. I would invest in a Macbook pro if you're an aspiring designer. There are a lot of great design programs only available on a Mac, and Macbooks hold up for a long time so it is often worth the investment.

    I recently bought the newest 12 inch macbook pro with 8gb ram, i5 processor and 128 ssd storage. It cost me about $1000 (I bought refurbished!) and it works excellent. My work macbook is much stronger (i7 with 16gb ram) but I can still work on my giant files and it won't slow down. It does overheat when I have more than 2-3 programs running simultaneously though.

    Even the macbook air is a good choice, because they have i5 with 8gb ram, and its cheaper. Buying a used macbook from a reputable electronics store is also not a bad idea if you want to save money.

    8 points
    • Adam SzakalAdam Szakal, 6 years ago

      Refurbished Macbooks are defo the way to go! Save money and polar bear cubs. Still using my late-2012 MBA for graphical work, editing movies and web dev tomfoolery without the slightest hickup.

      7 points
      • Frédéric AudetFrédéric Audet, 6 years ago

        +1

        1 point
        • Alex HoffmanAlex Hoffman, 6 years ago

          +1 as well, although...I had an experience where I got a referb and it had issues with the graphics card. Apple kept wanting to replace parts in it and after the third part replacement it still wasn't fixed. I was pretty upset bc I had been without a computer for two weeks. I take the computer home and boot it up, still obviously hadn't been fixed. Their techs put in new hardware and didn't even boot it up to see if it solved the problem before returning it to me. It was an older version than the one's they had on the shelf so technically I got upgraded to a newer machine through the manufacturer warranty. It was a real pain in the arse and I imagine it might have been much easier to replace if I had purchased applecare. That's my 2¢

          0 points