COULD IT BE ANY CHEAPER??
We may never know for sure what went through the mind of Steve Jobs when he made the switch to Intel chips for all Macontosh computers a few years ago, but I have to wonder if he ever had in mind that people would discover what off-the-shelf hardware went into the new systems, and begin to build their own. If you ever thought that you must have an Apple computer to achieve your creative media aims, like I do, but considered the expense of them a barrier to entry, there are some new developments which might amaze you.
Just recently I bought the parts, and my housemate put together a system. It's not an extremely fast or powerful system, but it was extremely cheap, and it works. For about $65 USD I got a small motherboard with an Intel Atom 1.7 Ghz processor and on board video. I got a single 2 GB DIMM to fill the one slot on it for just over $40. At another store we got a small case, not unlike a sleek, black DVD player, for about $40. We also got essentials like keyboard, mouse, headphones etc. for probably less than $20. Throw in a 80 GB hard drive we already had we got a system up for less than $200 total. A cheap monitor would run, maybe, another $100. Best of all, this system boots as a Mac with OS X Leopard.
As I mentioned before, this isn't the fastest system, with rocket speed GeForce video, but consider what I made my first film on and think of how it might compare. Consider that the system I used then cost almost ten times much. That's technology for you. Even in these supposed difficult economic times, there's no excuse not to get the tools and get started on your show. Are you ready to begin?
Just recently I bought the parts, and my housemate put together a system. It's not an extremely fast or powerful system, but it was extremely cheap, and it works. For about $65 USD I got a small motherboard with an Intel Atom 1.7 Ghz processor and on board video. I got a single 2 GB DIMM to fill the one slot on it for just over $40. At another store we got a small case, not unlike a sleek, black DVD player, for about $40. We also got essentials like keyboard, mouse, headphones etc. for probably less than $20. Throw in a 80 GB hard drive we already had we got a system up for less than $200 total. A cheap monitor would run, maybe, another $100. Best of all, this system boots as a Mac with OS X Leopard.
As I mentioned before, this isn't the fastest system, with rocket speed GeForce video, but consider what I made my first film on and think of how it might compare. Consider that the system I used then cost almost ten times much. That's technology for you. Even in these supposed difficult economic times, there's no excuse not to get the tools and get started on your show. Are you ready to begin?
2 Comments:
Yes, Apple seems to be taking the biscuit with the disparity between it's computer prices and what the cheapo competition is offering. I hope they wake up to the fact that people don't need Apple hardware to run OSX now and come out with a competitively priced mac pro. With a good graphics card for it's day, for the first time. I want to buy Apple, but what's the point of paying 3 times as much?
Be careful i hear that the newest patch prevents you from booting an atom processor
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