Computer spec for web design & DTP and Mac or Windows?
Discussion
Dear All, following my recent query on web design services I have decided to do it myself with something like Xara Designer 365. I need new hardware though as I only have a 4yr old laptop - so need advice on how high a spec 'All-in-One' PC I should get and whether this should be Apple Mac or Windows?
All advice appreciated!
All advice appreciated!
You are just doing this for yourself and not making a business of it?
The simple but unhelpful answer is the best you can afford I suppose, but you don't need anything special. Just fast and with a lot of memory. Mac or Windows; whichever you prefer. The latter will be cheaper for the same performance. I'd go for a fast internet connection. I've got BT Infinity and the faster upload speed is a boon.
One thing with a desktop is that you can get a decent processor and RAM. Everything else you can upgrade as and when you need to. I've got the same desktop I had in the mid 90s. All I've changed is everything, but it was done in stages. I would never have bought the one I have now as a fully made up one. Much too expensive to justify. I'm going for an SSD in the summer.
Lots of storage with an external HDD for back up.
After years of using Webplus (and other) web authoring software I've recently changed to Wordpress. For the cost of the annual upgrade I can buy a new theme each year. It is not as much fun, but I can't see myself going back.
The simple but unhelpful answer is the best you can afford I suppose, but you don't need anything special. Just fast and with a lot of memory. Mac or Windows; whichever you prefer. The latter will be cheaper for the same performance. I'd go for a fast internet connection. I've got BT Infinity and the faster upload speed is a boon.
One thing with a desktop is that you can get a decent processor and RAM. Everything else you can upgrade as and when you need to. I've got the same desktop I had in the mid 90s. All I've changed is everything, but it was done in stages. I would never have bought the one I have now as a fully made up one. Much too expensive to justify. I'm going for an SSD in the summer.
Lots of storage with an external HDD for back up.
After years of using Webplus (and other) web authoring software I've recently changed to Wordpress. For the cost of the annual upgrade I can buy a new theme each year. It is not as much fun, but I can't see myself going back.
Not trying to make a business of it - just need a nice website and flyers for my wife's new business. May need to tag on e-commerce functionality to it as well.
Derek Smith said:
You are just doing this for yourself and not making a business of it?
The simple but unhelpful answer is the best you can afford I suppose, but you don't need anything special. Just fast and with a lot of memory. Mac or Windows; whichever you prefer. The latter will be cheaper for the same performance. I'd go for a fast internet connection. I've got BT Infinity and the faster upload speed is a boon.
One thing with a desktop is that you can get a decent processor and RAM. Everything else you can upgrade as and when you need to. I've got the same desktop I had in the mid 90s. All I've changed is everything, but it was done in stages. I would never have bought the one I have now as a fully made up one. Much too expensive to justify. I'm going for an SSD in the summer.
Lots of storage with an external HDD for back up.
After years of using Webplus (and other) web authoring software I've recently changed to Wordpress. For the cost of the annual upgrade I can buy a new theme each year. It is not as much fun, but I can't see myself going back.
The simple but unhelpful answer is the best you can afford I suppose, but you don't need anything special. Just fast and with a lot of memory. Mac or Windows; whichever you prefer. The latter will be cheaper for the same performance. I'd go for a fast internet connection. I've got BT Infinity and the faster upload speed is a boon.
One thing with a desktop is that you can get a decent processor and RAM. Everything else you can upgrade as and when you need to. I've got the same desktop I had in the mid 90s. All I've changed is everything, but it was done in stages. I would never have bought the one I have now as a fully made up one. Much too expensive to justify. I'm going for an SSD in the summer.
Lots of storage with an external HDD for back up.
After years of using Webplus (and other) web authoring software I've recently changed to Wordpress. For the cost of the annual upgrade I can buy a new theme each year. It is not as much fun, but I can't see myself going back.
Anything will do what you need.
What is your budget?
For value for money / low budget I'd take a trip to the Dell Outlet site and see what is available day by day. A tower/monitor will be cheaper than an all in one. For the level you are using, most will be fine, but I'd aim for a good sized monitor (24" is a nice size) and an SSD drive for speed.
For higher end, a 21.5" iMac is a nice piece of kit. If you know anyone in higher education then you can get 5-15% off if they order it (or if you buy it with them in a shop)
What is your budget?
For value for money / low budget I'd take a trip to the Dell Outlet site and see what is available day by day. A tower/monitor will be cheaper than an all in one. For the level you are using, most will be fine, but I'd aim for a good sized monitor (24" is a nice size) and an SSD drive for speed.
For higher end, a 21.5" iMac is a nice piece of kit. If you know anyone in higher education then you can get 5-15% off if they order it (or if you buy it with them in a shop)
wax lyrical said:
Dear All, following my recent query on web design services I have decided to do it myself with something like Xara Designer 365. I need new hardware though as I only have a 4yr old laptop - so need advice on how high a spec 'All-in-One' PC I should get and whether this should be Apple Mac or Windows?
All advice appreciated!
What's the spec of the laptop? You'll probably find that it's more than up to the job.All advice appreciated!
Small businesses / one person bands have been getting on with designing the odd flyer / website for years with bog standard equipment, and more often enough just using MS Word.
You only really need to shell out for the super duper mac if you're planning on editing large numbers of high resolution images etc and would benefit from the extra oopmh and screen size.
Website design has become less cpu intensive in recent years thanks to the advent of wordpress templates and jquery etc. Again, unless you're planning to knock out sites for third parties on a regular basis, new equipment is likely to be unnecessary.
Good design begins with your skills and proficiency, not the specification of your tools.
My laptop is an Asus N56vz 4242. Snappy name!! 
Product Features
Screen size (Inches)
15.6
Screen Resolution (pixels)
1920 x 1080
Operating system
Windows 8
RAM (Gigabytes)
8192
Hard disk capacity (Gigabytes)
1000
Processor
Intel
Processor series
Core i7
Processor number
i7-3610QM
Processor speed (Gigahertz)
2400
Number of USB ports
4
Battery life (Hours)
3.5 (rubbish I know)!
Graphics card brand
nVidia
Graphics card model number
GeForce GT 650M,
Graphics card memory (Megabytes)
2mb
It has a blue ray player and great speakers. Windows 10 now.
Product Features
Screen size (Inches)
15.6
Screen Resolution (pixels)
1920 x 1080
Operating system
Windows 8
RAM (Gigabytes)
8192
Hard disk capacity (Gigabytes)
1000
Processor
Intel
Processor series
Core i7
Processor number
i7-3610QM
Processor speed (Gigahertz)
2400
Number of USB ports
4
Battery life (Hours)
3.5 (rubbish I know)!
Graphics card brand
nVidia
Graphics card model number
GeForce GT 650M,
Graphics card memory (Megabytes)
2mb
It has a blue ray player and great speakers. Windows 10 now.
wax lyrical said:
My laptop is an Asus N56vz 4242. Snappy name!!
I have a slower (i5) version of that laptop at home, it's perfectly fine for web development - I use it for that at a weekend if I'm working from home (mainly Wordpress and .net).Although I've never used Xara - Photoshop, Notepad++ and Visual Studio mostly.
The biggest productivity improvement for me is extra screens, I run two at home and three when in the office (although a fourth would pay itself back fairly quickly I think).
wax lyrical said:
Not trying to make a business of it - just need a nice website and flyers for my wife's new business. May need to tag on e-commerce functionality to it as well.
In that case, almost anything will do. However, I went from i5 to i7 with twice the ram and the improvement was remarkable. Re: e-commerce, I use Ecwid on my website and it has been, touch wood, flawless. I recommended it to a fried and he asked me how good the help forums were and I had to say I didn't know as I'd never used them.Also, I would endorse:
maffski said:
The biggest productivity improvement for me is extra screens, I run two at home and three when in the office (although a fourth would pay itself back fairly quickly I think).
I have just two, but the increase in productivity and ease of working is remarkable. Going onto the laptop with just the one is a bit of a drudge.I bought a 24" Samsung screen today and the laptop seems to be running Xara Designer and Serif Pageplus 9, pretty well! It has an I7 processor already. Not bad for a 4yr old machine.
Many thanks for all the advice on this thread - much appreciated!
Many thanks for all the advice on this thread - much appreciated!
RobDickinson said:
Your laptop isnt too bad tbh
8gb ram is a little light, and 1tb hdd would be better as an ssd.
you can plug in a bigger screen and just use that
Otherwise look for a recent i7 with 16gb ram and SSD
8gb ram is a little light, and 1tb hdd would be better as an ssd.
you can plug in a bigger screen and just use that
Otherwise look for a recent i7 with 16gb ram and SSD
The spec on that laptop is many, many times better than you need based on your requirements.
I spent most of my professional web development career running around at best on a core 2duo with 2GB on windows 7.
8GB a little light, are you kidding me?
You will see more benefit from the large external screen and swapping to an SSD than adding more RAM.
I spent most of my professional web development career running around at best on a core 2duo with 2GB on windows 7.
8GB a little light, are you kidding me?
You will see more benefit from the large external screen and swapping to an SSD than adding more RAM.
wax lyrical said:
Is it possible to add/ change to an SSD on my laptop?
I'm afraid I'm not very technical!
1. Have a look to see how much disk space is actually being used on your 1TB hard drive. Then have a think about what your reasonable usage is going to be like in the future to gauge the size of SSD you need to buy.I'm afraid I'm not very technical!
e.g. if you're only using 60GB of your existing 1TB, and you have no plans to be copying huge volumes of data around e.g. entire cards of DSLR photo images, then a 275GB SSD would probably do you fine. You could push the boat out for a 525GB but if you're not ever going to scratch the surface of the 275GB then it's a waste of money.
http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/compatible-upgrade-fo...
2. Buy a USB 3.0 caddy and fit the SSD into it
https://www.amazon.co.uk/External-Enclosure-Laptop...
3. Make a back up of anything useful from your laptop onto a USB stick or cloud storage etc. Always handy in case something goes horribly awry
4. Download and install Macrium Reflect free edition
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree
5. Follow the instructions to clone your existing 1TB drive onto the SSD. There are likely to be 3-4 partitions on the 1TB drive, e.g. a recovery partition, a boot partition and then your main data partition. You will need to clone all of these. It will need to shrink the main data partition down to fit the 275GB / 525GB SSD you have.
6. Once completed, shutdown the laptop, unplug the USB 3.0 caddy and remove the SSD.
Optional step: go and make a cuppa or find some decent gloves. The 1TB drive is going to be hot so you might want to give it a bit of time to cool down before trying to remove it.
7. Follow the instructions here to remove the HDD module from the laptop. It's just one screw to remove the panel
https://www.how-fixit.com/laptop-repair-guides/asu...
8. Replace the 1TB drive in the metal frame with your SSD, replace into the laptop and close the panel.
9. Power it up and hopefully it all works.
Given that your needs don't involve reading or writing a huge amount of data, the only significant benefit you're going to notice from moving to an SSD is that your laptop will boot up more quickly. And it'll be more likely to survive being dropped. The chance of fubaring the upgrade process would out-weigh the benefits for me, but each to their own!
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