Re: mac laptop for ex1 on the road

You'll need at least a 15" Macbook Pro with 4GB of ram (for speed of handling footage) and a 7200 rpm internal hard drive.

The best advise I can offer (and that I implement with my system) is a portable RAID 1 drive like a CALDIGIT external hard drive device. This is a hard drive enclosure with two hard drives inside, that mirror each other. If one goes down, you have the other as backup, and the unit will rebuild once you put in a new hard drive to replace the one that might fail.

You will need an external power source though to run this. But in meantime - copy to you internal hard drive during day time, copy across to CALDIGIT in evening with power supply at your accommodation.

Without a unit like CALDIGIT, you will be fumbling around copying to multiple external hard drive enclosures to safely backup your days shooting, and that can be a hassle.

Units like the CALDIGIT can contain 2TG data with hard drives combined, or 1TB mirrored for backup, as I use them.

Or for a short term power supply in the field, I use my UPS power safety device that I plug my laptop kit up to anyway when I use it. As well as protection from random power surges, it contains a battery (for during power failures) that allows me to operate computer devices like hard drives in the field.

Good luck!

Cheers,
Tom

Camera Operator - Editor - Motion Graphics
(http://www.tomdavid.com.au)