What to Consider When Purchasing a Laptop For Surface Pattern Design

Hi there, it's Erin Margaret your host of The Introverted Hermit Podcast. In today's mini episode, I will be sharing my personal experience with purchasing a laptop for surface pattern design; and what to consider before purchasing a laptop for surface pattern design; in hopes by sharing my story with you, that you will not make the same expensive laptop purchasing mistake as I did.

View my artistic side here: erinmargaret.co

Transcript

Even though I was an iMac user for 9 years, I purchased a gaming laptop built with 32GB RAM, a 16GB NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3080 MAX-P graphics card and an AMD Ryzen 9 5900H Processor because an artist mentioned, in an online community, they used a gaming laptop for pattern design. 

My old iMac was not powerful enough to handle Adobe Apps and couldn’t receive the latest software updates, so I stopped using it.

I don’t play computer games but the price of a Apple MacBook Pro for surface pattern design was out of my price range. So, I purchased my first new gaming laptop operating on Microsoft Windows.

Once I had my gaming laptop, I installed Adobe Illustrator. Then in the middle of creating a pattern design the gaming laptop kept freezing. 

I contacted Adobe and told them about my circumstances. They suggested I contact an IT person to find out why because they couldn’t find any problem with their Adobe Creative Cloud software.

Then I hired an IT person and they advised me that storage Apps use a lot of internal storage memory on a laptop.

I took their advice by deleting any unused Apps and I removed the Dropbox App from my laptop. 

This helped to improve the load time for my gaming laptop to load when I turned it on; but my gaming laptop continued to freeze when I was logged into Adobe Illustrator.

I decided to contact the distributor of my gaming laptop who suggested I send my gaming laptop back for them to have a look at. They found my internal solid state drive was faulty. The fault was due to me turning on and off the gaming laptop without powering it down properly. A silly mistake on my behalf which I have not repeated.

After my gaming laptop was returned to me, it continued to freeze whilst using Adobe Illustrator.

I couldn’t understand why until I reached out to one online surface pattern design community and was told by one designer that gaming laptops only read data not write data; that I should be looking at purchasing a creator or workstation laptop built for Adobe Apps. 

Needless to say, I decided to sell my gaming laptop. I contacted the distributor who took my gaming laptop to have it serviced and was issued a performance test receipt to show an avid gamer.

They were interested in purchasing it because my gaming laptop was in excellent condition. It performed like a new gaming laptop. 

Once I sold my gaming laptop, I watched a couple of YouTubers talk about one creator laptop brand and I had a look at the tech specifications online via a tech retailer's website.

I purchased the creator laptop and had it upgraded to 64GB RAM and another 2 TB of internal storage to future proof my creator laptop. 

I thought this was the laptop I was meant to buy. How wrong I was.

It shut down unexpectedly within 24 hours of initially unboxing it and powering it on. So, I returned it to the tech retailer to issue a warranty claim.

The tech retailer said they couldn’t replicate the fault.

Then my creator laptop produced horrible grey horizontal lines across the OLED laptop screen when filming the screen with my Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max. 

The tech retailer suggested I change the frames per second settings on my Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max but it made no difference. 

I showed them some short video clips via my Dropbox link of my laptop screen photographed with an older Apple smartphone and a Google Pixel smartphone.

However, the same horizontal lines appeared across my creator OLED laptop screen. 

I also showed them another photo of my previous gaming laptop screen with no horizontal grey lines appearing across the QHD IPS laptop screen which was photographed with my Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Their tech team viewed the video footage but said they couldn’t find any fault with my creator laptop on their end after it was return to them for a second time.  

Perhaps it was the QHD IPS Panel screen technology which seemed to be more compatible with my Apple iPhone camera lens technology? 

Or perhaps these strange horizontal lines were caused by some weird electrical magnetic interference when the room light was switched on whilst filming at the same time? 

However, I also filmed my mother’s Acer UHD laptop screen with my Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max and placed my mother’s 9-year-old iPhone in front of my Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max so that it could be seen in front of my mother’s  Acer laptop screen. 

My mother’s iPhone and my iPhone 13 Pro Max produced no horizontal lines across the Acer UHD laptop screen. 

What I have learned from this expensive laptop purchase is to ask a qualified expert who knows a lot about laptop screens, smartphone lens technologies and interior lighting sources.

This should help to avoid those horrible horizontal grey lines that appear across the laptop screen because you won’t be able to get a full refund or new laptop replacement if the tech retailer finds no hardware issue.

A technician from the tech retailer advised me to purchase a dedicated camera for filming. This isn’t always financially viable for people on a budget who are new to designing. 

You would think the latest Apple iPhone would suffice as an external camera given its price tag. 

You might also be thinking, well there’s an inbuilt screen recorder which is true but look at how many YouTubers are filming behind the scenes of them playing games on their creator OLED laptops. 

Do you see horrible grey lines appear across their creator OLED laptop screens?  

Gosh no! 

No one would purchase a laptop nor get paid to sponsor their YouTube videos if those horizontal grey lines appear across their recorded video.

So please don’t make this expensive mistake as I did. 

Consider everything you need in a laptop.  

This includes whether you plan on filming behind the scenes of your laptop screen in view with your smartphone camera as well as whether you are choosing a laptop built to handle heavy design graphics without freezing up all the time.

For now, I will not be using my Apple iPhone to film behind the scenes of my creator laptop. 

What I have done as a temporary measure is downloaded NVIDIA Studio Drivers onto my creator laptop that operates on Microsoft Windows 11.

NVIDIA Studio Drivers are designed for illustrators, designers, photographers and 3D artists who need drivers for design and illustration, which is great. 

However, Adobe Illustrator takes an incredibly long-time to load which is bizarre. I was under the impression 64 GB of RAM and a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 processor would suffice as I only have two additional software programs open: Gmail and Microsoft Word.

Well, it doesn’t seem that way.  

So, I would love to afford a new MacBook Pro for podcasting and design before the end of this year. The creator laptop I have is no match for Apple’s technology.

Well, that’s all for today’s mini podcast episode.  

I’m Erin Margaret your host of The Introverted Hermit Podcast. 

I hope by sharing my story will encourage you to talk with a qualified expert to help you choose the right laptop you need for your personal or business needs. 

Keep updated on the latest episodes via your favourite podcast player by subscribing to my podcast at erinmargaret.co/podcast 

PODCAST DISCLAIMER: Please note the information I discussed today was just that – information only. It is not specific advice. If you take action following something you heard today, it is important to make sure you get professional advice about your unique situation before you proceed, whether that advice be legal, financial, accounting, medical or other advice. 

Is there another topic you’d like me to explore in future podcast episodes? 

Email me directly at erin@erinmargaret.co with your questions. 

Wherever you are right now listening or reading my podcast transcript, take care and make it a great day.