31 Octobrrr 2024

[KathyB]

After an unusually warm month, we had our first freeze of the season last night, which coincided nicely with the day my 12-year-old thermostat decided to give up its last.

Edited to add that I am in the process of shopping for a new laptop, since my old one is 11 years old. Apple just came out with new MacBook Pros yesterday with a new chip. I had been waiting for the announcement before buying, but naturally, I'm now more confused than I was before, since the configuration I thought I wanted is no longer available. I'm trying to figure out how much RAM I really need, vs. a processor upgrade. I know I need to spend more on storage, despite what Consumer Reports says in its latest issue about few people needing more than 256G of storage (I am definitely not "most people" in this instance, and I think a whole terabyte would better fit my needs--I have a lot of fonts and client assets and large applications). Anyway, I was all excited to be computer shopping, and now just feel supremely irritated and confused rather than excited.

Happy Halloween as well as Happy World Series (I was rooting for the Dodgers, so I'm very happy).

[DiveMilw]

I totally relate to your post, Kathy.  Whenever I shop for a computer I am amazed & confused by how much things have changed since the last time I bought one.  And I think I sort of keep up with the technology.  

[scenicdesign71]

I'm with you both.  I've had my laptop for eight years, it's on its last legs, and I've been waiting for the new MacBook Pros to come out.  The other day I ended up ordering one with probably a lot more RAM than I really need, but my current laptop has been getting so clogged for so long that I wanted to make sure I could keep this next one for another eight years without that happening again.

Then, just last night, I discovered that quite a large part of the storage issue seemed to be solved just by emptying my AfterEffects cache.  So now I'm wondering if I should go back and change my order, and save a bunch of money, by getting less RAM on the new MBP.

But I dunno... I'll be running some pretty big apps on this laptop, and it does seem as if my storage needs just keep getting bigger and bigger over time.  One reason my current laptop seems so much emptier today, caches aside, is that over the past year or so I've been moving huge numbers of files onto an external hard drive.  Many of them belong there — older projects, mostly — but many others don't, really; I'd just been moving them there in a frantic effort to free up space ever since it started becoming a problem a year or so ago.  And given how crazy my iCloud situation has become with the computer always so full-unto-bursting (albeit mostly, it would appear, with cached data which turns out to be purge-able),  I probably might as well stick with the most RAM I can possibly afford.

Then again, there's also the laptop-vs-desktop issue.  I've been using laptops alone for as long as I've been using computers — I've never owned a desktop — and, somewhat ridiculously, have never gotten a larger monitor to connect to them: I've always used only the laptop's screen and built-in trackpad (no external trackpad, mouse, or stylus/tablet).

Which works after a fashion; I'm used to it, never really having worked any other way, but it does seem somewhat stupid given the nature of my work.  Viewing enlarged images only in pieces, and constantly shuffling windows around for lack of screen space, have long since become unconscious reflex; but all those microseconds, compounded over time, add up to a workflow that some would probably find laughably inefficient.  I've often thought about upgrading — most recently, I've been considering getting a Mac Studio when the new ones come out next spring or summer.  But now, with an almost-fully-loaded new MBP arriving in two weeks, it might make more sense to just get a separate Mac Studio Display to use as a larger/additional monitor for the MBP.  Or conversely: if I am going to get the Mac Studio next year, then that would presumably become my "main" computer, and the laptop would be mostly for relatively-rare situations where portability is crucial (or for use as a small extra monitor, for tool palettes and such, alongside the Studio).  While I'd still want a new laptop now (RAM aside, it's just overdue), probably still a MBP, if the plan is for it to become second fiddle to a serious desktop within the next year, then this laptop could probably stand to be a lot less fancy and expensive than the one I've currently got on order.