Welles: Vue questions?

[Spinland]

It's cool...though why am I reminded of the guys in "Jaws" comparing scars?

So, it's not exactly skyvana but methinks I'm really tickled with this sky render. Took almost exactly 20 hours to complete. I started with one of the sunset presets to get the sun and atmosphere kick-started, then deleted the clouds and replaced them with two decks I set up. The camera is sitting almost right on the upper edge of the lower deck, and the effect came out just how I wanted. I'm chuffed! Here it is resized down to 800x500 (the original is at 1680):

test_sky_dual01_800.jpg

On my ideas for the next rig, were money no object this is what I'd go for:

ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation

Since I'm not a gazillionaire I'm probably going to settle for the single-screen version of the above, which comes in at about a grand cheaper. HP makes a strong contender, basically the next generation of what I have now, but the Lenovo has the integrated screen calibrator and the Wacom tablet and comes in at almost the same price for the same specs. Plus Lenovo is strongly endorsed by the open source geek crowd as well-made and not loaded down with hard-to-maintain exotic parts. It ports very nicely to Linux with available drivers, for example. I'm planning to stick with Win7 but it's nice to know the hardware should be easy to find updated drivers for down the road. I might not get quad core, that's about $700 as an option, but a top-of-the-line dual core should run nicely.

[Welles]

Trans-Atlantic Race!

http://homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodrich/RubberDuckie2.jpg

[Spinland]

I absolutely love it, Welles! Awesome!

[Spinland]

Okay, so I took the plunge and ordered a more Vue-friendly machine. Not a Lenovo, nope; nor another HP. I went for the Ultimate Power in the Universe...

The_Ultimate_Power.jpg

I should be able to make whole planets, and then blow them up. Now if only I could get the Emperor to visit and speed up construction.

[Gare]

Love the edge lighting, Spinny!

When Christmas is finally over, I'm going to take the rope lights off the shrubs and do the same with my Logitech keyboard.

[Spinland]

Heh. The good news is you can change the color of all that mess--or turn it off entirely. I never understood the whole pimping your computer craze anyway.

[Gare]

Alienware grew as a company because they wanted the gaming market. And they got it.

Sexy name, bright lights, "Star Destroyer II" ?

The gaming sector and the high-end rendering sector have always been symbiotic. Gamers provide the $$$ as early adopters for faster machines and more massive video cards, bringing the prices down from the stratosphere. Modeling weenies like us provide the graphics for the games.

Actually, you can thank Dell for buying them, too, because they shared some of the technology that made it possible for Alienware to make a notebook model.

Don't fry your lap with your laptop! You know, you can buy a cooling pad and some places offer a tray you can sit your laptop on that has fans and other passive cooling systems.

-g-

[Spinland]

The underside of my current rig:

vesuvius.jpg

The fans whine up like turbines on a 737, and putting body parts near those vents along the left edge is a recipe for pain. It's a full-on P4 CPU, not a mobility chip, and combined with the vidcard I'm amazed this thing doesn't melt down (it actually did once, but it was a design flaw and I got a new mobo and vidcard out of the deal). I can only wonder what molten fun the new one is going to bring.

[Gare]

Noise can be fun.

Then again, you ever try to edit audio while video editing, with 18 fans humming along?

Let me know how quiet the Alienware notebook is, Spinny. Barbara says if I ever can afford or have the need for a laptop, your specs would be the one I'd want. Which should make both you and me feel good!

As it stands, my EndNoise PC compact tower makes less fan noise than when our home's central heating kicks in so I figure I'm marginally ahead of the game.

[Spinland]

Yeah, I'm curious about the noise factor, too. It'd be nice to regain my sit-up-in-bed-geeking privileges.

[Spinland]

Oh, for some good clean number-crunching fun here are the salient actual specs of the rig I ordered:

1 317-0820 Intel Core2 Quad Q9000 2.0GHz (6MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
1 317-0858 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz 2 x 4096MB
1 320-8140 17.0in, WUXGA,LCD,ANW,M17X
1 320-0999 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M (NB10E-GT1)
1 341-0000 320GB 7,200RPM (xMB Cache) w/ Free Fall Protection
1 421-1400 Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English

The RAM was the only thing I maxed out; I could have run the tab up a couple more grand in the blink of an eye with vidcard and CPU upgrades, not to mention it would have handled a terabyte of disk in RAID were my pockets so deep. I figure I already have nearly a TB in external USB drive enclosures for a lot less $$, and if I need more storage I can just add more USB drives as I go.

[Gare]

You were wise to save your money on a video card, Spinner.

One thing you might want to look into is side-grading, if offered, from Home to Professional.

Pro is a kick in the pants more expensive at this time (we advanced ordered at NewEgg and got it for $99), but you get the full shell integration of VM and XP...in case any apps won't run under Win 7 64x.

Then again, you might not need it. I have several older apps installed, and only one or two refuse to run.



Pity.

I uninstalled them.

You could also have a few stiff drinks and create a dual boot system, or buy the VM module.


-g-

[Spinland]

There were only two apps on my list I was a little concerned about, those being Rhino and Nero6. In the case of Rhino I've read that many people are running it in Win7/64 with no problems, and in the case of Nero I know v6 won't work but Win7 has a native DVD burner and there's a really good open source alternative as well. Oh, make that three: my Acronis True Image v8 would have to be upgraded to the newest version but since I'm going to move my backups to Mozy I'm in no hurry on that score.

Hey, how 'bout those 2TB disk drives, eh? Hitachi just came out with one that spins at 7200, and it's under $200. You could fit a few compositions on one of those babies!

[Gare]

I always buy a generation behind when it comes to hard disks, to let the technology burn in, so to speak.

2TB seems like an awful lot of user files to go belly up in one go! One at a time, I'm replacing the 6 bays I have in the case with 1 TB drives, and watch the tech blogs for what's hot and what's not on any given week I'll buy, and make sure the body is still warm and not been sitting in a warehouse by checking the serial number sequences.

Sounds obsessive, but spinning hard drives are the most sound way to keep your data intact outside of off-site storage...which is on hard disk, too. Burned CDs and DVDs separate layers after several years, making them illegiX42*9#... I've switched from Western Digital to Seagate after two WDs tanked in one year. Now, I'll wait until Seagate has a week where everyone comes in hung-over on a Monday, and find a different vendor or try WD again.

Nero, IMFFHO, is reasonably priced, frequently wonky spyware. Win 7 gives you the opportunity to clean house, Spinner.

Deep Burner, free and Pro versions

No compelling reason to buy it; the free version works fine under Win 7 if you need to burn a CD, DVD, or make a music CD.

Apple's iTunes desktop player can also burn music CDs, free, very seldom pops up nags.

Win 7's MovieMaker isn't as glitzy as Nero's DVD authoring applet, but it works. And you can archive using Windows 7 just by putting a DVD into your drive, opening the drive window, and dragging files onto the drive icon. Some stupid nags interrupt the process, but all of the above have the Nice Price!

-g-

[Spinland]

The other beef with Nero (and why I'm not upgrading) is it's become bloatware. All I want is to burn files to disk, and it's become loaded with so much useless crap it's crazy. Version 6 wasn't too bad, but the trend had begun and it installs with several icons, only one of which I've ever used.

Deep Burner sounds pretty good. I was looking at ImgBurn earlier this morning, which is completely freeware. I will most likely be just fine with the native DVD burn ability, the only reason I even have Nero on this rig is XP only burns CDs natively. Drag, drop 'n' burn is pretty much my MO.