Buying a laptop for media studies and graphics

First of all this isnt me(him) its his sister if you were wondering why I am saying that I am saying I am doing media studies. :smile:

He let me use his account...

Anyway, lo folks

As the title says I am taking media studies and graphics AS this coming year and I am told it would be a good idea to buy a laptop for all the video/graphics work. Please can someone give advice on what type of laptop to buy.

I definetly want to buy an apple, I think I really have 2 choices:

A lower end macbook pro which has great overall specs inc. a 128Mb graphics card. But it is a little pricy for me.

On the other hnd I was looking at a normal macbook which is also pretty good with a 2.16GHz core 2 duo processor, 1 Gig of ram and a decent hard drive but it only has a 64NB graphics card. Is that a problem? How important is the graphics card compared with the processor and ram for media studies?

Thanks alot guys

Reply 1

angus_mcfisher

You can't beat the Mac Book Pro to be honest. Get that if you can afford it!

Reply 2

PieMaster

11

The Thinker

As the title says I am taking media studies and graphics AS this coming year and I am told it would be a good idea to buy a laptop for all the video/graphics work. Please can someone give advice on what type of laptop to buy.

You won't need to buy your own laptop for Media Studies at A level. Any video editing you do will be very low-end and any school/college will have adequate capture facilities.
If you then want to edit on your own machine at home, just use thier machine to burn the footage to a DVD (as data, not video).

Reply 3

daniel_williams

15

I've got a mac book pro and its so amazing, admittedly mines a top spec one for when the core duo 2 processors came out so it is middle of the range spec now.

if you are going to buy one... get the mac book pro. although if you are going to be doing work at home... i'd much rather suggest buying a mac mini, cheap as they are they will do what you need or even one of those lovely new stylish I-macs.

Reply 4

Luize

13

I did Media A level (now doing it at uni) and never did any video editing in the Alevel. If I had done any the college had the computers in place for that. You won't need your own computer for doing it. In Media Alevel the only thing a computer is used for is typing now and then...maybe a bit of research on companies online.

Reply 5

wicker_man

For video editing and non-3D work, the graphics card is not an issue. You need a fast processor, lots of ram and fast hard drive.

The MacBook would be fine for this kind of work, but buy your memory from Crucial (2GB is about £65) and install it yourself (simply remove battery, flick lever, slot in ram). A firewire external hard drive would be good for storing videos and backing up.

Reply 6

steveoyo

I did a diploma in media and I loved having a decent computer. I taught myself to use all the Adobe programmes and created some awesome 3D animations for my projects, (everyone else was doing basic stop motion) The school then invested in new Macs with After Effects 6.5 on them and asked me to do a tutorial for them, hahaha. Having good spec equipment wth all the software will give you better knowledge of applications and you'll notice the difference in your portfolio compared to others that were limited in their tools.

Buying a laptop for media studies and graphics

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