I'm about to get a new computer and want it to be able to handle Articulate 360, Camtasia, Photoshop and Company Outlook, sometimes with 2-3 applications open at the same time.
I also want publishing to be as fast as possible and not have to worry about system crashes due to not enough power.
Recommendations on specs? graphics cards? computers? I would be grateful :)
This is always a tricky one as a number of things depend very much on personal preference. However, there are certain decisions that are unavoidable and the two I always start with are budget and format.
I generally set myself a budget at the beginning of the process and then revisit it towards the end to ensure that I was originally being realistic and also to check if perhaps it can be stretched a little for that better screen or more memory, for example.
As far as format is concerned (and I won't go into the Mac vs PC debate), you will definitely get more bang for your buck with a desktop rather than a laptop. However, you will lose portability, which for some of us (myself included) is essential. As a result, if you head down the laptop route, you can expect to pay more to get the spec you are after.
Things to consider:
a. A 4K screen is nice to have, but is not essential.
b. A solid state drive (SSD) will make a significant difference to start-up and file access times and I would strongly recommend one with a minimum size of 512GB.
c. A minimum of 16GB of memory will enable you to happily run all the programs you wish to have up and running. Also make sure that you have room to expand in the future as you may wish to go for 32GB if you intend crunching a lot of high end graphics at some stage.
d. Get the best graphics card that you can afford, but also do take account of your requirements (i.e. there is no point in getting a card that will happily run 4 x 4K screens all at the same time if you only ever intend to have a single screen on your computer). As far as recommendations are concerned, it is a case of personal preference, but I don't think you can go wrong with a good NVIDEA card either in a desktop (NVIDEA GeForce) or a laptop (NVIDEA Quadro).
e. From a processor point of view, I personally would recommend at least an Intel Core i7 as a minimum.
I hope this helps and if you have any further queries, please don't hesitate to post them here.
1 Reply
Hi Ted,
This is always a tricky one as a number of things depend very much on personal preference. However, there are certain decisions that are unavoidable and the two I always start with are budget and format.
I generally set myself a budget at the beginning of the process and then revisit it towards the end to ensure that I was originally being realistic and also to check if perhaps it can be stretched a little for that better screen or more memory, for example.
As far as format is concerned (and I won't go into the Mac vs PC debate), you will definitely get more bang for your buck with a desktop rather than a laptop. However, you will lose portability, which for some of us (myself included) is essential. As a result, if you head down the laptop route, you can expect to pay more to get the spec you are after.
Things to consider:
a. A 4K screen is nice to have, but is not essential.
b. A solid state drive (SSD) will make a significant difference to start-up and file access times and I would strongly recommend one with a minimum size of 512GB.
c. A minimum of 16GB of memory will enable you to happily run all the programs you wish to have up and running. Also make sure that you have room to expand in the future as you may wish to go for 32GB if you intend crunching a lot of high end graphics at some stage.
d. Get the best graphics card that you can afford, but also do take account of your requirements (i.e. there is no point in getting a card that will happily run 4 x 4K screens all at the same time if you only ever intend to have a single screen on your computer). As far as recommendations are concerned, it is a case of personal preference, but I don't think you can go wrong with a good NVIDEA card either in a desktop (NVIDEA GeForce) or a laptop (NVIDEA Quadro).
e. From a processor point of view, I personally would recommend at least an Intel Core i7 as a minimum.
I hope this helps and if you have any further queries, please don't hesitate to post them here.
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