Route44
Posts: 12,015 +82
I am coming to my TechSpot family for some advice. I realize that this may not be the realm of experience for the majority of us due to the nature of the specific need but I decided to give it a shot.
Long story short: My son will be entering community college this fall and will be pursuing an A.A. degree in Digital Design and then move on to a 4 year institution (he has been accepted into Drexel University in Philadelphia but my wife and I don't have $230 thousand!). The core courses he will be doing are Color & 2D Design, Graphic Design, Art with Computers, Web Graphics & Animation, and Web Page Design. I do know he must have access to Adobe Flash CS5 and there will be animation software involved but I have not been able to find out anything else -- I've tried. I doubt he'll be doing 3D Rendering during this time and even if he does the college's systems will have to do. So it looks like he will mostly be doing 2D Illustration/Animation.
I am going back and forth of a) either building a good solid home system (his current one is a 5+ year old socket 939 with an Athlon 64 single core cpu and XP Pro) and getting him a mid-range laptop OR b) putting the money into a laptop with an i7 processor, 6-8 gigs of RAM, and a dedicated card. In my opinion Option A makes more sense because I will build in order to upgrade as needed but as my son has pointed out to me that in two years he will be moving on and dorm life isn't actually ideal for a PC system whereas a laptop would be. The problem with the latter is that no matter how powerful a current laptop is the ability to upgrade is much easier with a PC system. Also, laptops can get stolen much easier plus repairing a desktop is something I can do.
It may sound like I have my mind up but I don't.
Thoughts please and recommend me some hardware. I have no budget in mind at this point but I am thinking even a mid-range desktop would more than suffice.
Thanks.
Long story short: My son will be entering community college this fall and will be pursuing an A.A. degree in Digital Design and then move on to a 4 year institution (he has been accepted into Drexel University in Philadelphia but my wife and I don't have $230 thousand!). The core courses he will be doing are Color & 2D Design, Graphic Design, Art with Computers, Web Graphics & Animation, and Web Page Design. I do know he must have access to Adobe Flash CS5 and there will be animation software involved but I have not been able to find out anything else -- I've tried. I doubt he'll be doing 3D Rendering during this time and even if he does the college's systems will have to do. So it looks like he will mostly be doing 2D Illustration/Animation.
I am going back and forth of a) either building a good solid home system (his current one is a 5+ year old socket 939 with an Athlon 64 single core cpu and XP Pro) and getting him a mid-range laptop OR b) putting the money into a laptop with an i7 processor, 6-8 gigs of RAM, and a dedicated card. In my opinion Option A makes more sense because I will build in order to upgrade as needed but as my son has pointed out to me that in two years he will be moving on and dorm life isn't actually ideal for a PC system whereas a laptop would be. The problem with the latter is that no matter how powerful a current laptop is the ability to upgrade is much easier with a PC system. Also, laptops can get stolen much easier plus repairing a desktop is something I can do.
It may sound like I have my mind up but I don't.
Thoughts please and recommend me some hardware. I have no budget in mind at this point but I am thinking even a mid-range desktop would more than suffice.
Thanks.