#i'm gonna have so many gigabytes

[himbeaux-on-ice]

i know i've been like dead to the world on this website for a little while here but once i get my tax return i'm going to buy a phone that can run multiple apps without exploding for the first time in like. two years. and then it's over for everyone

[foone]

here's a question I'm not sure this is the best place to talk about:

if you were going to build a set of DOS/windows machines to play ALL PC GAMES, how many would you need?

Like, the boring answer is "ONE" but that's terrible and no, not really. Yes you can run DOSBox and such on a modern computer, but there's plenty of games in the hard-to-emulate era where they just won't run on a modern computer without a lot of patching and hacks and even then, maybe not.

So a slightly less boring answer is "TWO": One for the Hard To Emulate Era and one for NOW-GAMES. So like a 600mhz Pentium III with a Voodoo 3 and Windows 98, and a Modern Boring Machine. You play nearly everything on the modern one, including DOS games (using DOSBox and similar), but games that fit in the hard-to-emulate era, you play on the Old Machine.

BUT if you want to have a set of computers for most of the eras of PC gaming, you need more than that. Like if you were populating a museum of PC games. How many? I'm gonna say... FIVE. Maybe SIX.

An IBM XT. This is the best system for the earliest era of PC games: booters, early DOS games, anything without speed control (yes, there are turbo buttons, but they can only do so much). This is like an 8mhz with a 20mb hard drive, 640kb of ram, PC speaker only. You definitely need a joystick.

High-end 486/Pentium. This will play the rest of DOS games and nearly all Windows 3.1 games. 16mb of RAM is more than enough. A hard drive of about ~500mb (one of the first size limits), a soundblaster and maybe a GUS or MIDI device. You'll need a CD-ROM drive, for sure, even though most games won't need it.

Pentium II/III, or an AMD K6: Most early Windows games from the windows 9x era. You'll need a PCI sound card and a 3DFX card, probably a Voodoo 3 or above. You could go with an early nvidia like a geforce 2/3, but then you don't get GLIDE games. Something like 128mb of RAM, a couple gigs of hard drive, nearly all games will be CD-ROM so you want something FAST, and probably an old copy of Daemon Tools/CloneCD and a pile of no-CD cracks, because that will be NOISY.

Late single-core era: Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64. This is for the games that are relatively recent (2000s and onward) but have compatibility reasons that make them not run well on modern systems, because they don't handle multi-core systems, 64bit windows, or windowses newer than XP. So obviously this is going to run Windows XP, maybe tweaked Vista at a push, and it will 100% be the 32bit version. You're gonna have like 1-2 gigabytes of RAM, a few hundred gigabytes of hard drive space to a terabyte, and a video card like a GeForce 8-series or a Radeon HD 3000.

Boring modern machine. Fastest CPU/GPU, most RAM, biggest HD, etc that you can afford. Run Windows 10 or 11, it doesn't matter.

And the only reason I say "five or six" is because you might want to stuff another computer in, call it PC 3.5: Basically a fast Win9x machine, but this one uses an nvidia/ATI GPU instead of a 3DFX GPU. This'll be a machine for high-end Win9x/ME games that need more graphics power than a 3DFX card can manage, but don't work on an XP machine. I don't know for certain there are games in that area, but I wouldn't at all be surprised.

[netscapenavigator-official]

So, like I said I was, I'm re-encoding all the videos on my Jellyfin server as AV1 to save space. I've been doing that for about 4-5 days, straight, at this point. So, I'm gonna give a progress update at just how far I've gotten in those 4-5 days.

So far, I've managed to re-encode a singular folder that was about 13.72 GB.

I still have many other folders to go, that all total up to about 109.12 GB.

I'm going to be here forever.

On the bright side, re-encoding the videos as AV1 fixed some of the corruption that caused a lot of them to become unplayably stuttery.

Also, what I have finished re-encoding was once 10.15 GB. It is now 7.70 GB. So, while it is taking forever, I have managed to save over two whole gigabytes by simply running my videos through a program that essentially makes my computer get hot.

So with this level of success without even scratching the surface, I'm excited to see how much space I'll save when all is finally completed.

[c-40]

A-T-4 003 Push The Button

I was out the other day when the lyric to a pop rap song being piped caught my ear, the lyric was Push The Button. The context in this case was pushing a button on a mobile phone, as a subject of pop music the telephone has been around as long as pop music itself. The subject is continually being reinvented for anew generation, for a while in the 1990s I remember it was pagers, and before telephones songs were written about writing letters, there are also plenty of songs about telegrams, all sorts of long distance communication

Pop music records changing times but as with fashion it likes to see itself in the vanguard leading the way, every season a new year in with the new out with the old, but for the last 20-years or so it's tech and gadgets that have been the height of fashion. It was a lot easier to imagine the future of technology in 1984 than it is in 2024, or even 1999 when Nas released Nastradamus in which he predicted (amongst many things) laptops with 100 gigabytes [of memory], my smartphone has more memory than that! Perhaps that's one of the reasons the most streamed song in the UK last year was Miley Cyrus's turn of the century style pop disco track Flowers, you can't argue with the song, no wild predictions here, she will survive and she can buy herself flowers - I remember in the 1980s when women couldn't buy themselves flowers, it shows social progress - or perhaps it's the workout she does in the video like all those Ministry disco-house videos from the turn of the century that's made it so popular

Miley Cyrus's Flowers is retro like pretty much all mainstream pop music is today, is it just nostalgias pendulum? I'm not convinced, this type of disco-pop been out of the charts since the late 1990s. What has changed since then is how we consume music. I enjoy science fiction movies but what makes me laugh in them is no matter how far in the future they are set if the scene is in a bar or club or something the music is 1990s techno or house, maybe bass music for films made more recently. To me it says in the imagination of the film makers music stopped innovating at some point in the mid 1990s. Coincidentally this when neoliberalism peaked and has been limping along ever since

Newcleus's Computer Age (Push The Button) takes Push The Button from another cultural obsession synonymous with the height of the Cold War (pushing THE button) and applies it to computing. Newcleus weren't as niche as you might think, Jam On Revenge (The Wikki-Wikki Song) peaked just outside the top 40 on the UK singles chart and Jam On It got into the top 100, the album Jam On Revenge getting to 84 on the album chart (Newcleus did even better in the US)

One of the main drivers of innovation in pop music is new technology. Electro-funk of the early 1980s like Newcleus arrived on the back off new synthesisers and drum machines. Has there been any great leaps in music tech since the mid 1990s? Soundcards are better, tasks have certainly gotten quicker and easier, there are MORE software emulators and you can do some of the old tasks on a smartphone now instead of a laptop or desktop. I'm not a musician or studio guy so I can't say for sure if there's been any great leaps in music production in the last 20 years, it looks to me things have just been refined. Oh! of course generative or ai music has come along in the last few years

Which brings us to the lyrical content of Computer Age, for a pop song that is 40-years-old some of the things they are saying about computers are still in discourse today. Newcleus had previously gone by the name Positive Messenger "and were making music that had a purpose, either messages of love or faith or talking about the conditions of the world." Newcleus and Jam On Revenge was lighter and had fun with hip hop but Computer Age sounds like it's a throwback to their roots

"Computer age is now Everyone must have a machine They say it's gonna make life easier, well, I can't stand it...."

You can't argue with the above verse. In the UK there's been several efforts to adopt a computer and for all of us to go online, interactions with local government or banks and all your bills are done via computers now, it easier until it isn't. Here Newcleus decide to ask a theological question which isn't exactly useful, does reliance on computers make us gods or slaves? and Newcleus conclude god is going to be pissed with us if we replace him with a computer

"For here we sit in our easy chairs As our machines decide how we'll fare Who will suffer, who will survive? It's up to the computers"

So in the above verse Newcleus hit one one of the most important discourses around ai/ml computing. Ai/ml has been used to decide who qualifies for parole in the US for a decade now, the data used to make the calculation records many decades of bias against non-white people so when ai/ml was used in the prison system we found the ai/ml reproduced the bias recorded in the data. Ai/ml is being used as giant management tools, making all kinds of decisions that have real life consequences. If a government or business want to make cuts or set tight targets an ai can do this without see people or asking how people will manage?

"It's up to the computers" isn't correct, it could be up to us. Some computer scientists are calling for citizen assemblies to work with ai/ml, more awareness is certainly needed. Right now tech giants are predicting a scary ai future that only they can fix, this isn't true and it gives tech companies with already too much power even more power

I wrote a proposal for a job funded by the CIA once via Cambridge University. They wanted artists to create narratives that challenged the story that an all powerful all knowing ai will destroy humanity so we might have a more sensible conversation

[spaceslayer]

i’m directly typing this from my new laptop asgdfahsgdfa i can’t wait to put it to use but also i am not looking forward to the next couple of days of just setting everything up

[limetameta]

stardew valley pitch to my buddies

@skaelds i don't want to be limited by the reply word count

disclaimer: i am deeply invested in this game

so it's a game on steam you can get for super cheap (for the AMOUNT OF CONTENT IT HAS OH MYYYYYY GODDDDDDDDDDD IS IT CHEAP AND THE FREE UPDATES HOLYYYY FUCK!)

it's a pixel game :)) so that means THAT IT IS BASICALLY NONEXISTENT AS A STRAIN ON YOUR LAPTOP IT IS TINY IT ISN'T EVEN LIKE 2 GIGABYTES (i think i just know it's super tiny)

like if you ever played the sims 4 and you fear your computer is going to implode NEVER FEAR stardew valley will make your computer laptop feel like a young little lad who's ready to go to the Olympics and bring back gold.

whereas sims 4 makes you pay for content that's half arsed and is made by a multi billion company (shame ea shame shame) that keeps making more and more micro transactions - everything you get in stardew is within the initial purchase (and GET THIS, we get MAJOR UPDATES AND MAJOR GAME UPDATES THAT ADD SEVEREEEE GAMEPLAY FOR FREE)

andddd

andd checck THIS OUT

stardew valley is a passion project by ONE MAN concernedape. ONE MAN made ALL OF THIS. he drew the pixels. he animated the pixels. he wrote the text. he coded the game. he MADE THE MUSIC. he made the gameplay. ONE MAN DID ALL OF THIS!!! HE WORKED DAY IN AND DAY OUT THERE'S ACTUALLY A VIDEO ABT THAT

so you know the quality is super high because this dude gave his heart blood tears and soul into this game.

now what the game actually is about lmao

it's got MANY SEGMENTS

at its core stardew valley is an escape from capitalism (cough looks at being multi millionare cough) where the farmer (that's YOU) escapes the office and goes to pelican town in stardew valley ~~ to become a farmer and live in the moment :)))

but then YOU FIND OUT THERE'S A SHIT TON TO DO NOT ONLY IN THE FARMING ASPECT BUT THE CRAFTING, THE FIGHTING OF MONSTERS WHO HAVE INTERESTING LOOTS TO GIVE YOU, A WEIRD MAN IN A HAT WHO IS SENDING YOU RIDDLES????? GAMEPLAY???? ACTUALLY RATHER INTERESTING NPCs WITH THEIR OWN LIVES WHO THE MORE YOU BEFIREND THEM THE MORE LORE THEY GIVE YOU???? AND THEN THERE'S COOKING! YOU CAN MAKE SO MANY RECIPES, FRIEND, SO MANYYY !!! OH MY GOD !!!

my favourite part is fishing because it's supposedly extremely difficult for some people and i love to flex *flex* tho it's very relaxing as well.

UNTIL YOU'RE TRYING TO CATCH A LEGENDARY FISH! YEAH, YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY, THERE'S LEGENDARY FISH!!! GOTTA CATCH EM ALL!!!!

and depending on the season you can catch/grow different fish and plants.

AND THEN???? HIDDEN MAPS???? UNLOCKABLE CONTENT OOOOH , ACHIEVEMENTS, MANY THINGS! MANY SPOILERS!

and you can romance the villagers. nobody's homophobic.

also!!!!!!!!!!!! THERE'S A WIZARD!!!!!!!!!!! (and he has an ex wife)

and the more you keep playing the more ur gonna figure out the dynamics between the villagers and realise ooh la la there's some steaming hot TEA right here ! it's like a telenovela like a soap opera.

:))))))) then there's the multiplayer aspect of the game where up to 4 farmers can play on one farm and cause havoc. i think it's up to 4??? i'm not sure.

so it's SO FUN AND CHAOTIC with friends. @tennesseebedward knows this well. we invent lots of hilarious lore for our joint farms and roleplay.

i didn't even GET EVERYTHING but this is the gist of it :)

[potatotrash0]

Fvsorj! I meant to ask what was Genshi about! Lol I just woke up and remember my tumblr PS and saw the update on your blog. I'm curious about the game (I assume it's a game??) Because I love the charater designs!

OH skxjksjdwkjd okay that makes more sense. I was gonna say you could just look up Gandhi’s wikipedia page lmao

But Genshin is a game, you’re right! It’s an open world rpg of sorts I think? Idk the technical term for it. You play as a traveler who falls from the sky into an unfamiliar world called Teyvat. Throughout the story, you’re looking for your lost sibling and trying to find the god who sent you to this world.

As of now, the game only has three of the seven nations. Mondstadt is the city of anemo (wind) and freedom, Liyue is the city of geo (earth) and contracts, and Inazuma is the nation of electro (electricity) and eternity. But there are tons of side quests and a lot of the NPCs have their own bits of lore that you can read about in their dialogues. There are also story quests, which are basically one-on-one showcases of the various characters and their personalities.

And yeah, all the characters have super cool designs!!! It’s like. One of my favorite parts about Genshin, all the characters are so unique and fun and it’s so interesting to learn who they are and why they have their visions. Ah, Visions are things that allow regular people to control the elements. They’re gifts from the gods, more specifically archons, who are gods that rule over a nation and represent an element.

I talk a lot but it’s a really really cool game with great characters and personally, I find the story to be really interesting. So much effort goes into creating the environments, music, characters, and lore and I just. Man. <33 but I will say this game takes up so much storage…….so many gigabytes………hhhhhh

[askagamedev]

I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on your language response. What player has ever looked at a download size and said "I really wanted to play this but it's 2 GB too much, no thanks." I'll believe that devs don't want to invest time in something they think players won't use, but saving disk space because they might "lose players" over a few extra GB sounds like utter nonsense.

You must be one of the lucky ones with a fast and stable internet connection then. A huge number of players out there have bad or unreliable internet connections especially in rural locations, underserved areas, or places where ISPs have monopolies so they don’t need to improve service. I don’t know where you are based, anonymous querent, but I’ve lived in some places where I’d only have to mention that I could only get Comcast or AT&T where I lived and everybody else would roll their eyes and nod sympathetically. It really feels bad when you want to play a new game that you just bought and the thing says says “downloading, 5 hours 46 minutes”. Have you ever felt frustrated that you had to finish a massive download hoping to start a game, only to discover that there’s another multi-gigabyte patch you have to download after the first one you didn’t know about? Feels bad, man. Imagine how it must feel if your internet connection is spotty or slow.

This is especially true for players on mobile and/or playing freemium games - they haven’t invested money in the game yet, so they have a lot lower tolerance a long install/download time. It isn’t fun staring at a progress bar, especially for a game you’re not yet invested in. I remember members of the SWTOR team telling me that they lost a huge number of potential players before they ever even started the first quest in large part due to lengthy download times. This is also why so many freemium games today now let you play through the initial tutorial/start of the game while it downloads the rest of the game in the background. Making that possible is a pretty massive engineering effort, but it is worth it because fewer players will fall out before even getting to play the game.

But hey, good on you and your awesome internet connection. I wish the rest of us were as lucky.

[Join us on Discord]

The FANTa Project is currently on hiatus while I am crunching at work too busy.

[What is the FANTa project?] [Git the FANTa Project]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

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Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[shiro-0197]

Hello Shiro !! 💖 Thank you for waiting for me to reply, I've not been feeling well ://

Vibrate is much better, and lmao a scream? 😝😝The actual most affective way to wake up. Our schools here totally don't allow phones either :') but they're half-a-day ones so I don't think it matters much. My ringtone is "Super Freak" by Rick James. I think it's hilarious😭

I'm so sorry to hear that, I hope you are okay now 💖 every day does indeed have an end, that's the most important thing to remember :')

KDJSKSHS !!! they expect us to be cheery while we still have sleep in us. Like, no sir, please. 😭 Plus those songs have really strong bases which can really mess with someone in the MORNING 😭🙃🔫

you're such a sweetheart, I always believe in you haha, you can literally do anything you put your mind to. But it's understandable that your friends voiced out. It sounds hard on everyone. I hope the school at least listened?

the whole violet Evergarden series is wonderful. The animation is gorgeous, but it's so so so heartbreaking. I also recently read the "song of Achilles" (by Madeline Miller) it was so beautifully written. Here's some art I found on Pinterest, because it pretty much summarises the book. (They're so perfect together, I can't !!! 😭😭)

you'll win indeed, AND AKJDSKHSJA NOOOO don't get spoiled there are so many spoilers 😭😂 aot is my favourite anime because it's so complex hhhh. Have you started watching?

I try, haha. Yes, that team really holds a special place in my heart. My mom has banned me from watching glee anymore tho ㅠㅠ but I hope you'll enjoy watching it when you start <3

I love you, Cookie. Once again, thank you for being so patient and understanding 💖 I've really missed you :)

—Ari

Hi Shortcake!! Thank you for taking your time to answer<3 I hope you feel better soon, sending good vibes your way

Yeah, it is! Though I had some roommates that were dedicated to sleep even through that one. I still think they're too powerful. You're lucky its half a day, we dont get our phones till the end of the week. Though I think it's better and actually effective, because we do stuff that's something other than scrolling aimlessly through our phone. In my case, though, its fantasizing so I dont think it's really productive but mmmm... Also I checked the lyrics for it, and I'm ajfjwkkx😭😭 I'd love that as my ringtone.

I've been feeling surprisingly well these past few days! I got to rest more and I have naps during the day which is kind of cool. I dont like taking naps cuz then I cant fall asleep at night, past the past week was exhausting so they actually help more <3

EXACTLY like I dont want to listen to a song about, what, pain? Whatever. Stop that. That is not energizing, bring the Happy by Pharrel Williams at least

Heheh, thank you. Thankfully they did try to resolve it, and it worked out, so we can write it down on our school's history book and let the next generation see what we did😁 the revolution of whatever .... uhhhhh yeah !

Ohh god this looks so promising!! I'm gonna add this to my read list, hopefully I can check it out soon🥺 the art is so pretty.

Sadly I couldnt start watching it yet, mostly cuz I hadn't gotten a hold of wifi for any longer than 2 minutes 😭 and my storage space is running out, which is also a pain. Somehow my 64 Gigabytes got filled up with anime screenshots, so I'll have to get rid of those<\3

What!!! For what?! You better sneak those views in sometimes. It makes you happy so not watching it isnt a good thing >:(

I love you more! And I missed you so much too🥺 I'm glad you're taking rests though, as you should ♡

[worldbuildguild]

What laptops are good for digital art? I'm sorry if you can't really answer this question if you aren't good with tech

I don’t know all -that- much about the technicalities in regards to computer components and such, but I have chewed through a good few laptops in my time, and I guess I know some vague buzzwords, so let me try.  I’ll be listing my two setups underneath just for pointers. Keep in mind that those setups are dedicated machines purchased and equipped specifically to handle some of the adobe’s most demanding software and is by no means a necessity to do art - but at least a good, solid pointer. 

You can make art on just about any sort of computer, this is going to be the ‘guide’ to a more beefy setup.  I also hear a lot of people talking well about mac and how it handles art programs and stuff. I’m personally not a MAC -kind guy since I think you pay too much for the brand name ( ironic since I'm a loyal ADOBE-nerd and Wacom fanboy I know ). 

https://www.technewscentral.com/best-laptops-for-graphic-design/id_12676

Working Memory If you work with software that chew a lot of CPU when running then I’d recommend you get a machine with sufficient horsepower. Especially programs such as Adobe’s creative suite can really round-house your computer’s RAM really really quickly. So be mindful that you get yourself some of those too. These two things work off of one another - so it’s likely that if your PC has a pretty ok RAM, it’s CPU will run just fine. ( 8GB Ram is considered the sweet spot for many common uses ).  Memory On top of this, you’re going to want to look into something with a lot of storage. Frequently - art files can be plenty for us messy artists, and they can vary greatly in size, from just a few kb to multiple gigabytes a piece. Personally - I wouldn’t go beneath 500GB in available space -at all-, especially not if you want to play games and do other things on your laptop. 

Core

Getting a computer with a decent amount of cores ( if you work off an Intel system / usually on Windows PC’s ), shouldn’t be all too difficult, nowadays, most come with at least an I5 core and an I7 if the machine’s newer. But I wouldn’t go beneath I5. 

Graphics card

This may or may not be relevant (i think it is ) - but your choice of graphics card can also impact your laptop experience on the whole. I generally have good experiences with Nvidia cards and less good experiences with the Radeon cards. Radeon’s just never lived up to my expectations, but I’ve heard that their newer models are getting better. Nvidia has a shitton of compatibility updates going on, but in my experience, they work as they should and don’t fry as often as Radeon. 

Cooling

If your software’s gonna be running your laptops CPU hard, then you’re going to make sure that you have a solid and functioning cooling system. Laptop’s biggest enemy is the buildup of heat due to filters clogging, or components ageing. When the casing of your laptop gets hot, that’s when you risk meltdowns and damages to its parts. Make sure your cooling sits ON THE BACK, OR AT THE SIDE of the laptop, at least in part. Some laptop has the heatsinks and vents at the bottom, which is more often than not blocked off by the surface it's standing on. This means it cannot rid itself of the heat, and the temperatures in your case will spike.  It’s also worth looking into saving up money to have your cooling-paste swapped out every couple of years. The paste helps assist your fans in your laptop to maintain a cool environment for your components. Changing paste is not a technically difficult thing to do for a technician, but prices can vary and it can be worth combining a change of paste with a general internal dusting ).

Casing

This is just an overall laptop tip, but some cheaper models boast a hard plastic case ( supposedly also to keep them lightweight). Which - if you want to travel with your laptop - is fine, but keep in mind that this makes the case vulnerable to impacts against hard surfaces. This has cost me a couple of laptops since the casing would crack open, dent and disturb the components, or distort the screen when I’d accidentally mishandle my machine.  I recommend you look into the sturdiness of your casing. As the material used can serve as a brace for your components  ( at the cost of some extra weight of course ).

Display

It’s important that you consider the display size and resolution and ensure that it suits your needs. High-resolution screens will give a clearer image of course, but it's also important to remember where your threshold for how small the screen should be. Smaller screens means more squinting, more leaning in and more fidgety manoeuvring.  Whereas a larger screen - while providing a better overview, can also become overwhelming and add to the computer’s weight and transportability. Make up your mind about where you want to compromise. 

http://www.ink-plus.ca/product/laptop-keyboard-replacement-service-including-parts

DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN GAMING, AND ENTERTAINMENT PC

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the hunt for a laptop. But what I do remember was that when visiting your typical electronics shop - the employés are likely to want to promote products that fall into what has become lowkey infamous as “ entertainment “ laptops. Around here, these “entertainment” laptops were sold as gaming laptops but didn’t hold the processing power or quality of an actual gaming laptop. These were often promoted to the broad demographic looking for a ‘gaming’ machine but not knowing where to turn to, or how much such a machine should cost. Entertainment machines were great for contemporary game requirements and streaming, but they weren’t typically equipped with lasting components that would keep it up to date and kicking a number of years later. 

I don’t know if this trend is still going nowadays since it's almost half a decade ago I had to purchase a laptop last. But I’m just going to encourage you to go to an actual GAMING PC specialist and not a general electronics as its rare that they have extensive knowledge about the vast array of products they sell.  Whereas - your local gaming-geek-den might actually be able to make qualified recommendations. 

Why am I telling you all this?  It’s because what I'm saying is that your requirements if demanding enough - can be met by even a rather basic, but proper gaming laptop. 

Gaming laptops often come with a good few RAM, plenty of CPU capacity, a good bit of memory to support multiple installed games, multiple cores and a solid graphics card. Along with fitted cooling systems that should be able to handle the heat a gaming session can put out. Many gaming laptops also boast pretty decent screens with little delay and crystal clear graphics. ( going for screens with either blue or white light is also recommended, read why here  https://theredlinestation.tumblr.com/post/185779914445/hi-weird-question-but-i-was-wondering-if-anybody )

Again, talk to your local gamer-pc-workshop or den or whatever, give them a list of software that you use and any other wishes you’d want for your laptop and let them research with you. It’s likely they know a good deal about what kind of specs to give you. 

Ok so my setups

Once again, remember- this is just MY setups. They are fitted to my lifestyle ( gaming, working with the Adobe suite: Photoshop, premiere pro, after effects, etc, simultaneously, streaming, writing, and so on ). You are going to tailor your own setup to your needs to avoid overspending on a rig that you might not use to its full potential. 

^ This here is my primary setup. And was my exclusive set up for quite some years until November last year where I got a tablet PC dedicated to drawing alone. But nonetheless, this boy has served me very well for about 5-6 years now, and still works without a hitch ( besides the fact that the fans have that typical “ I'm over three years old and therefore must scream, buzzing coming outta them ), I foresee he has at least 2-3 years left in him. We had a really good gaming store in town, who the owner, we had a semi-acquaintance to. I walked myself to the store after having saved up enough money to drop on a rig. I told the owner, who also worked the front of the shop, what my budget was- and what I was supposed to use the machine for, as well as what I otherwise liked to be able to do with a laptop, and he set me up to this - and made the necessary upgrades for me. I think I wound up dropping 1800 USD on it. Which was my biggest investment at the time, but it gave it all back in spades in terms of productivity and durability. - Again, I’ve never had it in for anything other than twice for maintenance dusting in the five years I’ve had it, despite the fact that it runs pretty much 24/7 364 days a year ) 

This setup was bought to manage my comic/illustrated film project and is a modified MSI GE 72, 2QD Apache. Modified in that the Apache model has three hard-disk slots, and that this one, on top of having its first slot occupied by the typical ( for the time ) 200gb C: drive, has a 1TB hard disk in its second slot ( and an additional 10TB hooked up as a tertiary memory drive: F; ). The extra 10TB is exclusively for storing files that are not actively used, or being worked on and was absolutely necessary since I work on so many projects and for a few clients with really heavy material as well. 

The laptop itself ( as hidden behind the screens ) sits on top of an aluminium cooling platform. This laptop ( and I think most MSI laptops actually ) come with two, large, additional fans alongside the basic cooling fans, that you can toggle on and off for when you’re punishing your CPU enough that it's running hot, at the cost of some few decibels. The thing’s encased in aluminium, which makes it rather heavy, but sturdy. 

Specs: 

Processor (core): Intel (R) Core I7 RAM: 8GB Virtual Memory: 13,2GB  Display output: 4K Graphics card: Nvidia GTX960m IOS: Windows 10

https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/wacom-mobilestudio-pro-wacom-mobilestudio-pro-display-performance-battery-and-conclusion-page-2

The secondary ‘setup’ - Mobile studio Pro 13

My newest investment was a dedicated machine meant for drawing only, and drawing on the go as well. I ‘ve only had it for some months now, so I can’t speak of its durability. But so far it’s been greatly increasing my productivity rate due to how easy it is to manoeuvre, and how the seamless display and technology blends with my Adobe package (which was one of the reasons I didn’t get an Ipad + pen, which is a VERY reasonable alternative if you don’t work with Adobe).  

If you’re not doing art as a job, study, or at least a very dedicated hobby though -I’d recommend you grab a Houion or similar product in the more wallet-friendly price range, as they can supposedly perform roughly the same while not eating away at your savings. 

This devices’ specs are much less beefy in some aspects than the laptops, but it works perfectly well for drawing, and the IOS system, while notoriously running the usual windows 10 issues - makes the tablet itself very versatile in many everyday uses. The pen itself is substantial in size and feels very comfortable in your hand. Although, if you don’t like the smooth surface of the tablet, you’re going to want to buy a textured overlay for it. For me though, it was just a matter of getting used to the minimum friction. There’s no batteries or recharging involved with the pen, and its broad range of motions and calibrations makes it very satisfying to work with. 

Specs:  Processor(core): Intel core I7 RAM: DDR3 SDRAM 16GB Memory: 512GB Graphics card: Intel Iris Graphics 550 IOS: Windows 10

This has been my VERY uneducated talk about laptops. Please please please go to your local shack and ask them to help you make the most qualified decision, or do your own research, as I'm sure my wholly subjective observations could do with some more browsing. 

BACKBLAZE STORAGE

If you work with art and large projects, then I cannot recommend Backblaze enough. Backblaze is a recovery service that stores all of your files on a cloud -while- you work. You don’t have to do a thing, just install the software and run in on booth, and it’ll be taking care of everything. It’s got unlimited backup space at a very affordable price per device.  And if you lose an item, or your hard disk is wiped, you can access your recovery on the internet and with just a few clicks - you can download EVERYTHING again. It has really saved my ass a couple of times, and if you have money to drop on to - I wholeheartedly recommend this service. 

- mod wackart ( ko-fi )

Mod Future chiming in! I agree with talking with someone who has actual experience in this field, but I’ll share my set up too. 

Mod Future’s setup - HP Envy X360 15″ 

To be honest I didn’t do a lot of research before buying it, and did it on Black Friday on the recommendation of a friend. This is my first laptop for college, I’ve had it for 1.5 years, and I’m going to run it into the ground. 

It has a really nice display! It even converts into a tablet with a touchscreen, and comes with its own Sketchbook app (and a stylus if you want to drop the extra $200) . The neat thing about this laptop is its processor, which is a Ryzen instead of the more common Intel processor. You can read more about it in the link here: https://www.wired.com/review/hp-envy-x360-13-inch-ryzen/

As a word of warning, this laptop’s fan makes quite a bit of noise, and you kind of have to rip out most of the HP preinstalled software  to make it less clunky, but I think it’s a fairly good machine all things considered! 

Specs: Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2500U RAM: 8GB Virtual Memory: 8GB Graphics Card: AMD Radeon(TM) Vega 8 Mobile Graphics IOS: Windows 10