Buying Equipment

ArtStation Magazine - Guide to buying a laptop for content creation

The artstation guide above is the best overview you'll find.

The following section will have details on individual devices or components.

UEFI / Firmware

Before making any purchase, review the manufacturer's documentation on configuring and updating your device's firmware.

It's a good idea to check on the manufacturer's website for how freqently the firmware receives updates, if it's signed, and how to obtain and apply the firmware update(s).

Additionally, if possible:

Uses UEFI and not legacy BIOS
UEFI networking stack can be disabled
Firmware write protections can be enabled
Boot password

Display / Monitor

TO DO

Tablet / Pen

TO DO

Printer / Scanner

Review manufacturer documents for:

Cost of ink
Availability of ink
Cost of paper
Availability of paper
Device support lifecycle
Device management
- Can it be managed locally? Embedded WebServer?
- Mobile app or cloud required?
Additional software requirements
- Drivers?
- Account / registration required?
USB support
Ethernet support
Wireless can be locked down / disabled

CUPS Printing Service

CUPS is an open source printing system developed by Apple for macOS and UNIX-like (Linux) operating systems.

Useful commands to help you identify compatible printers for your device, taken from the README.md:

You can run the lpinfo -m command to list all of the available drivers:

bash lpinfo -m

Run the lpinfo -v command to list the available printers: bash lpinfo -v

HP has an index of printers supported by the open source hplip package (installed by default on Ubuntu):

Check your locally installed version of CUPS compared to the minimum HPLIP version a printer requires for compatability.

For all cases, you want the following:

Feature	Status
`Driver Plug-in`	No
`Support Level`	Full
`Connectivity`	USB,Network

'No' for the Driver Plug-in means you do not need the additional proprietary driver to interface with the printer.
Connectivity should always support at least USB + Network at minumum. Parellel support is great in addition too.

Open Source Printer Drivers

https://www.openprinting.org/

CPU / Processor

TO DO

RAM / Memory

ECC Memory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory

Error correction code memory detects and corrects data corruption in memory.

This has a performance cost of a few %

Critical for virtualization, infrastructure, data processing

GPU / Graphics Processor

TO DO

NIC / Network Interface Card

TO DO

Storage

TO DO

calculating disk-write life expectancy

Testing Usability

Guidance on hardware resource requirements

2D Baseline

3x 2560x1440@72dpi images open in Photoshop, 10-20 layers, actively editing
Slack / Discord open
Gmail browser tab open
Screen sharing on Zoom / MS Teams

Other Considerations:

Additional creative tools not in use at all times, such as an external editor or a Photoshop plugin
There may be more than just a single browser tab of Gmail open
USB hub power draw and performance can very
- Some devices need to be directly connected to the computer to function properly

NOTE: A default install of Windows 10 / 11 with Chrome / Edge open can consume up to 4 GB of RAM while idle. 16GB of total RAM will be too low in most cases.

Minimum Specs

6 Core CPU, 12 Threads
- Provides enough 'lanes' in the 'highway' to juggle necessary tasks
32GB RAM
- Provides the 'space' for the applications or data to 'exist' while in use
4GB GPU
- Allows leveraging GPU acceleration (but not enough for GPU-centric workloads)
3x USB-A Ports
- Wacom + Mic + Camera
  - The built in camera / microphone may not work as well as external hardware
- Wacom + Mouse & Keybaord
- Wacom + External Drives
2x 1TB+ SSD, read/write 500MB/s+
- Solid-state drives survive movements of a laptop
- Read / write speed is important when:
  - Booting the OS
  - Copying files
  - Moving files
- 1TB of space is just enough to get started
- One SSD will contain the OS
  - Windows itself can require around 20-50GB of space or more on average