Mac Book Pro

[Jnavarro]

Hello

I am thinking of changing my actual computer. I usually use Osiri. Which Mac Book pro would you recommend me??. Do you think it's better if I change to Windows to use Slicer??? what are the minimum characteristics would the Mac Book pro should have??

Sorry about so many questions but I am in a big mess

Thank you very much

[vlad]

I am happily still using my mid-2010 17" MacBook Pro with an ancient nVidia M330 graphics card and i7 core processor. It was one of the last 17" screen models released. I also have Bootcamp installed and run two separate upgraded SSD drives: One for Windows 10 and one for MacOS El Capitan. I can use all software interchangeably on either operating system and have them duplicated on both drives for easy workflow. Exception is OsiriX on Mac only and 3DEditPro from 3DSystems on Windows only. 3DSlicer works equally well on both platforms, as does Blender, Meshlab, Meshmixer, and Netfabb Basic. Those are my main tools.

 

The 6 year old laptop slows down with 3D meshes over 1 million triangles, so if you have a need for ultra high resolution meshes then you need a modern dedicated graphics card. I've found no reason (yet) to have meshes over 500K triangles and usually decimate (simplify) well below that even for 3D printing.

 

The 17" screen (without workstation dedicated monitor when available) is great perk these days. So is Bootcamp dual boot option for greatest number of options.  That said, MacBook Pro is excellent choice for this work even if you choose to install and work only in OSX environment with open source software (including 3D Slicer). You may run into problems with proprietary licensed software (esp from hardware vendors that bundle software tools) supporting Windows only as part of typical enterprise culture.  That's the only benefit I can see of having a Windows machine or virtual machine.

 

Hope that helps.