Ooooooo. Nice. Thanks for the link. And now- to make a complete ass of myself… I will go OFF TOPIC. 
So- any reccomendations on lap tops? It seems that I am finding the info in this thread better for use in decisions outside of work.
Is running ZB an absolute requirement?
-K
Yeah- I would have to be running ZB, Maya, and your basic graphics packages. Mudbox I guess is an option, and so is Silo… but ZB is my pref.
Craig
what kind of difficulties have you got with tablet and zbrush on mac?
my intuos works fine with zb3 under bootcamp…
do you mean that mac version of zb2 doesn’t work properly with tablets or maybe you run zb3 under pararells?
My tablets and cintiq work fine with Bootcamp. But I’m limited to 2GB of RAM on a 8GB or 4GB computer since Bootcamp doesn’t support XP’s extended memory scheme (PAE) to get to 4GB. Moreover, on my MacPros the Bootcamp reboot cycle is over 5 minutes, which is major workflow killer. Sure, if I want to take my high end machines, and run them us underpowered Windows machines, it works. Barely.
When you go to Parallels or VMware, it’s a whole other ballgame. There, you have to trick windows and the VM to accept tablet input and to display the pointer. Barely tennable and the pointer looks distracting and funny.
The mac version of ZB2 is not supported on Intel Macs. Jason has published how to get it going (for us about half the time.) It’s running in Rosetta, slow, and unstable. Not a viable option for us since we’ve donated most of our G5 hardware to local schools by now. Performance is important to us since we’re not a hobby shop.
The solution has been for me to add a couple of XP stations to our shop. There really is no point in comparison. The “Windows-on-a-Mac” solutions are not suitable for a professional environment because of limitations, beta software, and lack of support. If you are commited to ZB, then the only way to go is a PC (I say as a dedicated Mac user.) All I have to do is look at all the effort to try to get ZB3 to run on a MAc versus running it on a Boxx workstation of similar power.
Since the thread is PC or Mac for ZB3, I have to recommend, without reservation, a PC as someone who works daily with both. I’d prefer a native Mac solution, but it is clear to me (and it should be to anyone who has been following ZB for the past couple of years) that this isn’t Pixologic’s direction–Mac ZB will always be a late, incomplete, and low priority. From time to time, Pix has made gestures towards the Mac community, but the Mac edition of ZB is pale compared to the PC release. This is in distinct contrast to some other players in the market, which have mastered simultaneous development and releases for Mac & PC.
Apologists will tell you “Well, ZB is different.” That may be so, but, whatever the cause, ZB3 is not satisfactory on Macs in our shop. The cost in time to support, instability, and loss of productivity is too high compared to simply running ZB on a PC.
-K
Craig, if you’re looking for a sweet little laptop, these ones that the dell rep showed me looked very nice:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/reftopic.aspx/pub/products/precn_kat?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz&~section=m4300
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/reftopic.aspx/pub/products/precn_kat?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz&~section=m90
If I had to go and buy one today, these would be on my short list.
Alternatively, the Santa Rosa Mac Pros, if you’re always going to start them with XP and Bootcamp aren’t too bad. You’ll only be able to load them to 2 or 3GB of RAM because of Bootcamp limitations (I’ve read different things about them.) I like my 4GB santa rosa very much, but not as a windows machine. (It’s OK under parallels–not great as XP machine, but not bad either.)
-K
Kerwin
Thanks for the info. I gotta admit- I didn’t think I’d be buying a Dell 
Hi Jason!
I read that you had used ZB on a macbook pro before, without any problem.
I have bought the latest version (dual 2.5GB processors with 4GB ram) and it seems to be slow. I have set MEM to 2000, but working with a 3.5 million polygon model is close to impossible.
I am not a PC expert: is there any other setting either on the mac or on parallels or in windows xp that I can change to achieve a good performance: I am far from what you have written…
Thank you for the help
Ivan
Hello ivan_fx, define slow? Hahaha, that is rather subjective. Slow loading, slow using?
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Apple RAM? Or did you go cheap? It really does make a huge difference.
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Try setting Parallels to 1GB then test something, record a script, so it’s a repeatable test. Then add the available RAM and run again.
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What is your harddrive speed?
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Also have you run Zbrush’s built in evaluation to suggest settings? You can search the forum for this as you must save them or they are lost each time.
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How many applications do you have open and how many files in each and of what size?
In early tests we didn’t see things being very slow all things considered and alot of improvements have been done to Parallels and OS X. I still find things very good, but then I remember when coding was done with a pencil, filling in little bubbles on card stock and feeding them into a machine the size of a room. Everything is fast now…
Not that I want to quote a cop-out but virtualization is just that, no matter the system or the hardware utilized.
The question isn’t ‘why isn’t it faster’, but ‘can you work’? I may have a heavily modified sportscar, but I also have an SUV, each is very functional at it’s task and sucks when the roles are swapped.
Thank you Jason!
I understand that speed is subjective, but I am far from the performance that you mentioned in your earlier comment.
I am not an expert, just a simple mac user, so I believe, that I will need some expert help to test and accomplish the settings that you recommend:-)
Thank you anyways!!!
Ivan
Interesting. Can you provide me with the info I asked for? And What version of Parallels? What version of Windows???
I will try to figure out something to help you… Hard though if you don’t know the system or the various applications.
But I can try…