Computer Advice needed, please.

Sandtree

arciere said:

A Mac is just an expensive computer, that's pretty much it.

Is that like saying a Ferrari is just an expensive car?

For the last decade Mac used the same hardware but a different OS. Buy a similarly compact, metal body laptop from Dell and their prices were comparable... look at workstations and the Mac was fairly often cheaper. The difference with Mac is they don't do the chunkier plastic body options.

Last year however they went from Intel to their own architecture, having not used one yet I'm reserving judgement on if its "better" but its certainly "different" and benchmarking appears to be showing much more bang for your buck -v- the intel models.  I think therefore that there is now more reasons to buy or avoid a Mac and its much less "just an expensive computer" given the differentiation.

As to the OP's friend suggestion, it seems odd to recommend a new laptop to someone who says they already have a laptop but still  use the less powerful desktop most the time.  Unless you intend to change your habits and suddenly want the portability of a small laptop then even as an Apple fan its not the right answer. 

IF you wanted to go down the Apple route then in the first instance looking at the Mac Mini would seem more sensible and you can reuse your monitor etc. Personally, I would and am holding off buying any new Apple computers until the 2nd gen of their processor is available just to allow the possible kinks to have been worked out.

arciere

Give me a Mac computer and I'll find you countless alternatives with better specs.
Yes, they're generally well made, but aluminium doesn't give your speed.

Anyway, just my opinion.

Norman-B

Laz 123, I've just started with the video editing and use VideoPad. MTS Video file (i think)

coffeehound

Some good deals on Macbook Air at present

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/brand-new-m1-apple-macbook-air-13-inch-8gb-ram-256gb-ssd-gold-ps82649-with-a-code-at-ebay-3746760

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/brand-new-m1-apple-macbook-air-13-inch-8gb-ram-256gb-ssd-space-grey-ps85785-with-a-code-at-ao-ebay-3746715

Sandtree said:

For the last decade Mac used the same hardware but a different OS. Buy a similarly compact, metal body laptop from Dell and their prices were comparable...

I (briefly) owned a Dell XPS, it was terrible in many ways but the alu case was like a GCSE metalwork project complete with sharp, rough edges.  Macbooks are a different planet of quality.  Smooth, sculpted chemically-etched and scratch-resistant.  And that's just the case.

interstellaflyer

Norman-B said:

So my PC time is spent on my 5 year old Desktop, i3-2100 CPU@3.16GHz, 2 core with 4GB memory. 

i3-2100 was launched in 2011  and discontinued in 2013 so it's unlikely the desktop is 5  years old, that said my parts build workshop desktop started life with an i3-2120 and 8GB memory and it was perfectly capable of running windows 10, doing the usual internet stuff with no issues, I did upgrade it to an i5-2400 at a cost of less that £20 of Ebay, I then went a bit extravagant and not very MSE and fitted an i7-2600, along with an extra 8GB of memory.

Sandtree

arciere said:

Give me a Mac computer and I'll find you countless alternatives with better specs.
Yes, they're generally well made, but aluminium doesn't give your speed.

Anyway, just my opinion.

But for 80% of users the average home computer these days is probably well over powered for their web browsing and email needs. Therefore if you don't value the aesthetics or compactness etc of the Mac you're probably better off spending less rather than keeping the same budget and getting more excess power in an ugly box. If you're a gamer then you won't be looking at Mac in the first instance.

Ok, I won't give you the computer... it only just arrived in the office, but happy to see the countless alternatives with better specs:

Mac Pro, 28 core Xeon processor, 1.5TB RAM, 2TB SSD, Twin Vega II 32GB v cards

I can certainly say its fairly nippy at running data simulations. 

Norman-B

Sandtree, not too sure this is a help. I'm doubtful this will be in my £400-£500 budget.

Laz123

Norman-B said:

Laz 123, I've just started with the video editing and use VideoPad. MTS Video file (i think)

Try converting the file to WMV, there's lots of converters to choose from. I prefer Video Converter Factory as it's free you can enhance up to 720p https://www.videoconverterfactory.com/free-video-converter/ I use Vegas Movie Studio but it's not free. You may find the WMV format speeds things up. Contrary to popular belief you don't need a high spec to do video editing. I'd put the converted file on another drive if you have and edit on your 'c' drive. You could add extra RAM which will speed things up too. I use a laptop so you might try editing on that to see if it's faster. An i5 is quicker than your pc's processor.

Norman-B

Laz123, great advice, thank you. 

[Deleted User]

Laz123 said:

Norman-B said:

Laz 123, I've just started with the video editing and use VideoPad. MTS Video file (i think)

Contrary to popular belief you don't need a high spec to do video editing.

This is a very good point, the processing of editing videos, cropping them, merging, adding effects and features is quite a low workload - I do a lot of this with 1440p videos at the moment and it doesn't really tax my machine that much - i5-8300H 4Ghz 16GB.

The bit that does benefit from more processing power is the step where you publish the video at the end of the editing. However you don't have to sit and watch it, even if it takes the machine 2 hours to encode the final video, you can go and do something else and leave the PC to it so you can get away with lower specs if the publishing step isn't time critical.

Anything from 6th Gen Intel processors have native H.265/HEVC hardware encoding and decoding support and gets better performance with each generation.