...its about DAMN time...eh QubeIt

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/dell ... -6-incher/

...less than 6lbs! ...a LOT of folks will have some weight lifted off their shoulders in the near future

...however I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for a 13" version

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Steve Robbins
Inventor Design Solutions & Innovations
"I believe in being an innovator " - Walt Disney
@_iDSi

Mmmm. Sounds good. I really need a new notebook since my current one is so old it only has USB1.0

This time around though, it's main duty will be image editing so I'll have to opt for the Full Gamut display.

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Ron
http://www.arken.net Engineering and Design
http://www.arkenstudios.com Professional Photography

7 hour 40 min battery life? Wow, sign me up.

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
Free 30 day trial of iPropWiz v5
Follow @seandotson & @mcadforums & @rndautomationon Twitter

...and that's with the 9 cell...wonder what the 12 cell last?

...and I bet the 12 cell weighs just as much as the M4500! ...I read over that part too fast I suppose

...oh and no mention of USB 3.0

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Steve Robbins
Inventor Design Solutions & Innovations
"I believe in being an innovator " - Walt Disney
@_iDSi

It's missing the Apple logo

Perhaps you should be looking at Apple.

yeah, then I'll need to get new software, what's the logic in that!

From my experience with the Apple iPod Touch, I won't be rushing to use the OSX interface anytime soon. I don't like not having control of where things go on my computer.

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Ron
http://www.arken.net Engineering and Design
http://www.arkenstudios.com Professional Photography

Boot Camp.

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Steve Robbins
Inventor Design Solutions & Innovations
"I believe in being an innovator " - Walt Disney
@_iDSi

OSX is nothing like the iTouch/iPhone OS. You have complete control of where things go on OSX. I am still learning some of the tricks on it but I'm almost as comfortable on OSX as Windows.

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
Free 30 day trial of iPropWiz v5
Follow @seandotson & @mcadforums & @rndautomationon Twitter

Per the Kevins and others, Inventor screams on the iMac. It has been my feeling that the iMac is the tool of choice for graphic edidting.

Ron, before you buy your next machine I would head to an Apple Store or a Bestbuy and just go and look at these computers. If you tell the Apple store people that you are a PC user, prepare for them to be a little snarky about the hell that you must be living in. That pisses me off when they get that way. If they get that way, just let what they say go in one ear and out the other.

The iMacs are very nice. You could walk into a Bestbuy and get a cheaper computer, but when you look at what the iMac offers and compare it to a similarly spec'd pc, the price is very competitive. The displays on the iMacs, and especially the new iMacs, are incredible to look at. (Oh my god, I just channeled Steve Jobs right there ).

The iMac would be great for photography. I'm not sure if I would sell this as a cad computer though. It could certainly do it. Especially if you went with the 27" imac and went with the Core i7. Biggest drawback to these computers is that you get what you get. The ram can be upgraded by the user and that is about it unless you get brave enough to find some video tutorials on the internet on how to take them apart. And about the only other thing you can change is the hard drive. Otherwise the iMac is pretty much a laptop in an all in one desktop pc.

For cad, I would go with the 15" MacBook Pro or the Mac Pro desktop. The MacBook Pro laptops are powerful but still come in a nice form factor. They are pretty lite. Graphics cards are decent, not as good a Quadro card, but pretty good. The biggest drawback that I see to them is they don't pack a ton of onboard ram on these graphics cards. You do however get a dedicated GPU and an integrated graphics chip. Helps for battery life when you don't need the dedicated GPU to non cad or photo tasks.

The MacPro desktops are beasts. If you spec a Dell or an HP and match the specs of the Mac Pro you might be surprised. In some cases the Apple will actually be cheaper. Most of the time they are within $100 of each other. With the Mac Pro you can do a little user upgrading of the system if you wish. The graphics card can be upgraded along with the ram and hard drive(s).

There are things that piss me off about Macs too. Such as no docking station for their laptops.

I'm a bit delayed here, but not bad. I'm approaching one year that I've had my M6400 and I'm truly loving it. I've somehow wriggled my way into mostly working from home these past few weeks, so it doesn't move much which makes the size and weight a moot point. That being said, the size and weight were never a high priority anyway. The way I see it, it's a hell of alot easier to carry this "portable workstation" around than a desktop equivilant. That's the perspective from which I view the size and weight.

In the future, I'm *considering* going with a nice desktop along with a 14.1" (or smaller) laptop with some pretty high specs. I've really been getting into development lately and it would really be nice to have a small, yet powerful, laptop to take notes (in OneNote) or follow along in Visual Studio. I can appreciate the netbooks, but they're just too small for my tastes and not nearly powerful enough or versatile enough.

I met a guy over the weekend that had a MacBook Pro and he had wiped the drive clean and installed Windows 7. He said he hasn't had a single problem doing that and that, in fact, Apple has a place on their website that gives you all the drivers to the hardware for you to install Windows 7. I think you've mentioned that in the past, Kevin, but seeing it in person really brings the point home.

_________________
Brian Hall
"Good enough" isn't good enough for me.
Follow me on Twitter @Hallmanac

Very very soon Apple is going to be updating the MacBook Pros with the new core i7 and i5 processors. The benchmarks have already been leaked to the internet. When they release these I will have a difficult time not selling the one that I have for whatever I can get out of it and buying a 15" unibody model.

Mmmmmm..........(slober).