Powerbook or Windows notebook?

[Sebastian]

Render farms, yes, that's what I said in my post above. But render farms are not what create these movies, the artists don't work on them, they work on SGIs, Macs, Xeon workstations, etc. Yes, obviously every studio out there is switching to Linux RENDER FARMS, it makes sense, but that's not a sign that everyone is using it for the actual production, they are simply using it for more cost-effective and timely output of the final content. The actual creation of said content is made on different platforms for different reasons, and OS X is still one of the top dogs in that area. Render farms are rented out like cars for god's sake, using that as an example says nothing about the actual making of what we see on the screen.

As for ILM, they never were an Apple house with the exception of their 2D artists. They have always been and SGI house, and the move to Intel was no big surprise, as SGI has lost pretty every customer with the exception of the NOAA, who seems to be the only client keeping the company afloat. SGI stopped being competitive years ago, for a multitude of reason.

No matter what though, we are digressing.

The original poster of this thread was presented with plenty of strong arguments for both sides, the choice will come down to what meets their needs. I could, and would love to, debate the business choices of big-name animation and special effects houses all day long, working for one used to be a dream and I still follow them very closely. So if anyone wants to continue this discussion, let's do it either over PM or email, unless it relates directly to the subject of the original post.

[Peter_AUS]

Told you this would happen.

[opus]

I'm thoroughly enjoying this discussion, although I have nothing more to add. I've learned a lot, thank you.

And Peter, you made me laugh out loud.

[DownByFive]

Honestly I was hoping for a lot more name calling and profanity...I'm very disappointed.

From what I've seen, no pc maker has a notebook as sweet as the Powerbooks, but they also aren't nearly as expensive...But I think I like the idea of challenging myself with learning a new OS. I successfully dual booted Linux on my first attempt and figured it out fairly quickly, so I think learning OSX shouldn't be too bad. Now I just need money. Anybody want to buy a kidney?

[Lionheart]

Honestly I was hoping for a lot more name calling and profanity...I'm very disappointed.

From what I've seen, no pc maker has a notebook as sweet as the Powerbooks, but they also aren't nearly as expensive...But I think I like the idea of challenging myself with learning a new OS. I successfully dual booted Linux on my first attempt and figured it out fairly quickly, so I think learning OSX shouldn't be too bad. Now I just need money. Anybody want to buy a kidney?

Panasonic ToughBook CF-W2
small, light, 1.1 GHz Centrino is almost as powerful as my old 3 GHz P4 desktop.
Weighs 2.6 lbs with battery, averages 6 hours daily use at my office before plugging in. It has a very bright viewscreen, twice as bright as my older P4 laptop, which weighed close to 6 lbs with batteries. May not be as powerful as the Powerbooks, but they're extremely portable and almost as pretty. I gave up my Ipaq PDA because it was about as easy to port my new laptop with me everywhere. And it plays Doom3, Halo, and Freelancer adequately