If she needs both portability and power, how about a Mac Pro (not MacBook Pro) portable setup? Sounds like a contradiction of terms, but check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTmDS-_SfpY. Heck of a lot easier to get a decent loaner monitor than a loaner CPU that will run everything from a flash drive. I especially liked the shot of the guy setting a smartphone in front of the Mac Pro to show just how compact the thing is.
On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 4:04 PM, Eric Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Everybody, > > May I ask for technical advice, please, from you who are probably the most > knowledgeable and informed community I know? > > I have a friend who is likely to spend the next several years in a very > high-travel situation, with six months or so in Asia each year and six in the > U.S., and the latter six probably spent moving around among states. She is a > photographer and videographer, which means she needs relatively > high-performance graphics computing power, but also expensive software that > takes time to accumulate. (The move toward subscription-everything is so > predatory and rapacious that she is staying with one-generation old software > to avoid falling into that pit, which means owning the software and having it > installed on some particular disk.) She is a mac user. It is likely that, > in the various locations, she will be able to arrange access to a loaner > computer, which (in my ignorance) I imagine could provide CPU and display, > which are the things that both need to be big but are a pain and a hazard to > ship around. > > Is there some _good_ solution by which everything that makes something "my" > computer can be put on a small mobile volume? This means principally OS and > applications; data can to some extent be journaled on secondary disks, which > will be required for backup anyway. I have assumed that one can make > bootable external volumes, but I have worried that on external volumes the > access may be so much slower than on installed hardware that for > graphic-intensive or video development, it may be unusable. There are also > solutions like Mac minis, but that is another non-modifiable treadmill, where > you buy the most you can afford and then are soon bumping your head on its > limitations. > > Is there really enough hardware-specific variation among machines that it is > necessary to have your OS and applications software installed and configured > for the whole computer? Or is there enough of a separation between the > hardware and apps by the OS, and a reduction to a small enough number of > instruction sets, that one can separate the compute and display engines from > the repositories for instructions? Something like a durable, compact flash > drive from which the OS is run would seem attractive for both price and > flexibility if it is possible. > > Many thanks for advice, > > Eric > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
