I am in love with Mac interface but I am a PC user because I can’t afford a MacBook Pro. Why don’t I buy a MacBook instead? Because I need the processing power of a graphic designer. Well anyways, being a programmer and a designer, I think I would be better off with a PC for compatibleness issues.
So, my solution to this problem is: I NEED a cool Mac interface for my PC. I searched around for tips and hints on how to do this. Found some great article (http://features.engadget.com/2004/06/09/turn-your-pc-into-a-mac/) and software that made my desktop looked like this:
Pretty neat, eh?
One thing was still missing for turning my PC to a Mac … it’s the feel of anti-aliased fonts. Well, I just found out (I know, stupid me :D) that actually Microsoft released an XP PowerToys called ClearType a couple of years ago which made my screen fonts looked awesome!!! It made almost everything (well, actually everything I tried so far) had anti aliased fonts. Firefox, Trillian, even the post-its I had on screen :).
Other things I did to tweak my desktop:
- Rainlendar (http://www.rainlendar.net) for the calendar application,
- Widgets from http://widgets.yahoo.com/ for the picture and post-its
- ObjectDock (http://www.stardock.com) for the dock on the bottom of the page
- Hide the windows start menu. (It could also be done from the ObjectDock) and don’t forget to move the start menu to page top.
And the nice desktop background, it’s from VladStudio (http://www.vladstudio.com)
Mita, I know this is soooo late, but I think Macbook still can handle all your “graphic designer GPU power needs” 🙂
The wrong assumption is that you need a powerful graphic card to do those Photoshop stuffs. Even the heaviest stuff don’t use any of the graphic card resources (unless you’re using Pixelmator for Mac, but that’s another matter). Even when you design using Maya for 3D rendering, for most of the part (especially the rendering part), it’s using raw CPU power and not your graphic card resources.
The only time that a 3D design program such as Maya or 3dsmax access the graphic card is only for pre-rendering (that is, when you design the preliminary models, you know, the one with gray background) and X3100 (which is Macbook’s graphic card) is enough to handle such a task.
PS: If your “graphical needs” includes heavy video editing, then yes, graphical power is very important. Other than that, I think it’s safe to go with Macbook, IMO.
Thanks for the info, Oskar :). You’re right I don’t use my computer that much for 3D rendering, but I do play games from time to time, so I think I still need the graphic card ;).
Are you a MacBook user? I’m curious whether the glossy screen affects the performance. I have a Vaio SZ, which also has this glossy screen but it has an ultra violety reflection (I don’t know what it is called, sorry) which makes it more bearable for me.