“That doesn’t look like a Mac” (hint, it isn’t)

Biscardi Creative Blob by Wlater Biscardi

Nope, that’s a long way from a Mac. That’s a brand new Dell Precision workstation featuring an nVidia Quadro card. I’ll post the full details on the workstation once I get it out of the box and set up which will happen later this weekend.

If you’ve been following along in my blogs you know we’re transitioning over to an Adobe / Avid workflow from 11 years of running Final Cut Pro and cross platform compatibility is one of the reasons for the change. If we go with Final Cut Pro X we have no choice but to run Apple hardware and all indications from Apple are showing the end of the “big iron” desktop is coming to a close. Whereas with Windows and Linux, there are still plenty of workstations to choose from with lots and lots of horsepower for the work we’re doing. So it makes sense to go with software that allows us to work on both Mac and Windows so we’re never limited by what just one company will provide us for hardware.

Dell? Seriously?

So of course, I’m a Mac guy and when I made the decision to go for cross platform workstations, my first step was to contact colleagues that have been running Windows for some time. I have literally NEVER used a Windows machine for work. Since 1993 I have been editing with NLE’s solely on the Apple platform. I have had PCs in the past for personal use and my wife still has a PC laptop, but I literally have a MacBook Pro, iMac, iPhone and iPad all within arm’s reach as I write this and my company owns about 20 or 30 Mac computers of one sort or another. It was imperative that I reach out to my colleagues for first hand advice on how to spec out a Windows machine.

I also reached out to all my third party vendors to ensure that our hardware would be compatible with the Windows box. All of my colleagues overwhelmingly recommended HP and in particular the Z800 model. Super fast workstation and from all accounts, can put the Mac Pro to shame when running Adobe software in particular. So how did I end up with a Dell workstation? Especially when not a single colleague even mentioned the brand? read more...