On Wed, 2006-12-04 at 17:10 +0100, Craig McLean wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Anne Wilson wrote: > [snip] > >> And congrats you your grandson on getting accepted to uni! > >> > > Thanks. I did have some doubts as to whether he was wise, going into that > > field. It's clearly very competitive, and I have the suspicion that it may > > be a young man's game - not a lifetime career. > > They said the same about I.T when I started in the early 1990's. I > disagreed then, and still do. > The rapid pace of change is often considered to be something that only > young people can cope with, but that's not true. Nor is the assumption > that innovation *only* comes from youth. > Tech-led industries are realising (as all other industries have) that > experience is invaluable. As in all other things, we stand upon the > shoulders of giants. > > I'm sure that your grandson's chosen field will prove the same. CG isn't > going away. It's not just the videogame market, but the film and TV > industries, advertising, marketing and, more and more, the internet > (think "flash" demos, intro pages and web-games). There are probably a > thousand other applications that we can't even imagine yet. > > > He's very keen to do it, > > though, so he deserves our backing. > > Hear, hear! My take on this, is that the grunt work is usually done by the Juniors and over time you work your way up the ladder or laterally into a related more stable field. The main difference I can see between IT and CG is that is that the more talented you are the more money you can make with CG, but with IT you generally only get more money only with experience, even though some parts of IT do require creativity. As far as hardware goes... we brought in a couple of the new 20 inch Intel based iMacs and set one up to dual boot OS X and Windows XP, then did some benchmarking with some Windows games. The new iMacs performed quite well according to the Game Heads in the office. They are a good looking compact piece of equipment. It may be a good alternative, since a lot of professional graphics work is done on the Macintosh platform rather than the PC platform, but you can dual boot to Windows to play games or use software not available on OS X. We also tested some virtualization software that allows OS X and XP to run at the same time, with XP in a window. This will likely be more expensive, but if most of their labs are using Macs, it is an alternative. RH has started porting Fedora to this platform as well, so it may be possible to have all three installed and usable. Best wishes too all.
