Holy cow, hadn't thought about that. I've been using a mac mini for a desktop for years, I bet if you don't need the power of the MacPro, the Mini would work fine. SDD is an absolute must, no disk. Helps with portability too: less likely to fail.
On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 1:06 PM, Gary Schiltz <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 >
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