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Author Topic: Advice for Computer for digtial photography  (Read 13146 times)

Khurram

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« Reply #20 on: March 26, 2006, 08:49:39 pm »

well looks like I may be getting a Mac again.  I went to purchase a PC, after pricing one out.  ANd the PC salesperson recommened a G5 Mac - which he doesnt sell!!!

The G5 is out of my price range.  But I am again considering the imac again (expanded to 2gb of Ram).  

the question is what kind of performance issues should i be expecting with the CS2???  how much slower is performance expected to be???

willl this be fixed with CS3??? and will such a fix necessitate another upgrade to CS3???
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61Dynamic

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« Reply #21 on: March 26, 2006, 09:52:14 pm »

Ars has some CS benchmarks.

PS CS3 will be a Universal Binary application when it is released in Q2 of 2007. This means it will run equally well on a PPC system or an Intel system.
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BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #22 on: March 29, 2006, 12:03:22 am »

As I wrote in another thread, unless you really need to buy something right away, I'd wait until at least September for the new Intel CPU Conroe to be released for both Wintel and Mactel machines. You'll have a machine which is basically 1.5 times faster for the same price.

Buying a new PC now is like buying a 22MP digital back now, when we all know that Canon (and possibly also Nikon) have much cheaper alternatives due out in a few months from now...

Regards,
Bernard

kbolin

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« Reply #23 on: March 29, 2006, 11:00:02 am »

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I would appreciate some advice on a monitor - note, i'm not looking for a high end model, looking for something servicable but for someone on a budget, as the switch to digital has been a very expensive 4 months.

Very expensive 4 months... yes!  But now you have the opportunity of significantly improving your photography on a daily basis.  I made the move to digital when Canon released the D60 and haven't looked back.  I still have film and wonder if it will ever get used (should probably give it away).  I get great enjoyment out of my expensive hobby.

PC or Mac... who cares if in the end it helps you deliver fine art photography!    

Cheers,
Kelly
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C4D

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« Reply #24 on: March 29, 2006, 12:19:20 pm »

As for CS2 and the Intel Macs I can share some of my experiences

I have a Powermac G5 Quad and a Macbook Pro
When I first received my Macbook Pro 2.0 with the stock 1 gig a ram and loaded CS2 it was sluggish and slow (but still usable). I then added another gig a ram thinking it would help out a bit. When I installed the extra ram and loaded up CS2 and did some speed tests, to my surprise the improvement with CS2 was huge! In all my years experimenting with computers and upgrading ram I have never seen such a large improvement by just adding 1 gig of ram, but apparently Rosetta is a memory hog and adding the extra ram really sped up the translation of Rosetta. Now it's not quad fast but I would say it has the same performance as a stock 1.5 Powerbook which I can live with until the native CS3 comes out.

One other downside of the intel Macbook Pro that I have noticed is multi-tasking with multiple non-native applications. For example if I have CS2, Dreamweaver, and Flash 8 (which all are non native and running through Rosetta) open at the same time, when I need to switch from one application to another it always freezes for a couple of seconds and sometimes takes some time to load up the interface of the application. Other then that my experience with the intel Macbook Pro has been excellent and as time goes on the performance is only going to improve, which is why I love macs, they always improve in performance as time time goes on, as for PC's that seems to be the opposite.
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Mark D Segal

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« Reply #25 on: April 01, 2006, 06:27:26 pm »

For what it's worth, I use Windows XP in a Dell 8200 2.3 GHz with 1.5 GBRAM and two hard drives at 7400 RPM. It is very stable. It does everything with Photoshop CS2 I ask it to do. Colour management has been working fine for me. Processing could be faster, because the technology is 4 years old now. Norton anti-virus works in the background. Never had a virus despite extensive use of the internet, downloading stuff all the time. System freezes are rare and easy to recover from. Windows XP is an easy OS to use. It doesn't require any more maintenance than periodic defragmentation of hard-drives, which can be scheduled to occur automatically while you sleep. I've never ever come close to thinking that I need an O/S overhaul or re-install. Microsoft's up-dates and patches are a bit of a nuissance, but they have always installed easily and worked well.  I've seldom needed help from Dell, but the odd time I do the calls have been answered much more promptly than used to be the case in the late 1990s - alot of improvement there - the help staff are courteous and they do their best to assist. Looking back over this experience, quite frankly I have very little to complain about. I've also read the horse-races between the latest PC and Mac performance stats on various menus of Photoshop actions. It's really down to hair-splitting. The real issues in choosing a computer are to know your expectations, hence what you need, and to buy the best quality for the money you can afford from a reputable pair of manufacturer and dealer, whether it is Mac or PC.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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emma_g

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« Reply #26 on: April 10, 2006, 03:35:27 am »

I hate adding to the brand debate: it's like talking about religion-it's really very personal and not based on any absolute fact. I have been a professional graphic artist since 1975, when it all still was done by ''hand''.  I have been using a pc exclusively since I made the move to serious computing (photoshop version 4), and have never lost any work ever. Good practices are necessary on any platform.
Because I deduct upgrade expenses as legit business expenses I can stay pretty much state of the art. Current set up(upgraded last month) is 2 AMD dualcore 265 opterons on a tyan thunder motherboard, 4 gig of ram, 2 sata 320gig hd's + a 74gig raptor for the scratch disc. I run only windows XP Pro. The home edition is not for business. I work in raw for all photos whenever I can(clients don't always provide this format).Photography accounts for about 40% of the large file content I work on. The rest is illustration related.
I don't use my work machine online EVER. I always keep an older pc for such work. Any "outside/client" discs are always virus checked before I work on them.
I run the entire CS2 Suite, often with Bridge, with three programs running at once-PS, Indesign and illustrator. A normal file for me on a illustrated book layout spread can easily reach a gig and I'm giddy with the speed on the current setup.
I have worked on macs, both in teaching situations and when I freelance inhouse for individual firms. They have always been fine machines when cared for properly.
My main reason for a pc is simply the number of program choices available. I know personal horror stories for both platforms. 90% of these are traceable to bad work habits, like erratic backup. The other 10% is hardware failures. The computer is just another tool to me. I clean my brushes after every use. I treat my computer the same way.
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situgrrl

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« Reply #27 on: April 10, 2006, 05:10:22 am »

With the release of Boot Camp, if it were me, I would buy an Intel Mac and run CS2 from Windows XP until CS3 comes out as a UB whereupon I would switch back to OSX.  However, I would never connect to the internet using Windows...

Charlee

Mark D Segal

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« Reply #28 on: April 10, 2006, 07:17:24 am »

Charlee, just an observation about what happens in real life, which of course need not influence your own preferences, countless millions of internet connections per day are made from Windows operating systems without any damaging incident. That has also been my experience since I started using Windows-based operating systems in 1991.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

situgrrl

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« Reply #29 on: April 11, 2006, 09:13:07 am »

Mark, you are quite right - if you stick to safe websites or you know how to maintain a winbox, you should have no problems, however, I don't and I can't and I'm a conspiracy theorist terrorised by the thought of spyware (and without a clue how to set up a firewall!)

Mark D Segal

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« Reply #30 on: April 11, 2006, 09:56:22 am »

There are three highly effective pieces of Software available to the 95% of the world on Windows operating systems for dealing with annoyances and intrusions:

Ad/Subtract PRO (manages cookies, ads, pop-ups, referrers, Java scripts)
Microsoft Anti-Spyware Beta (free download from Microsoft, regularly updates itself and scans your computer for spyware, trojans, worms, et., etc.)
Norton Anti-Virus or McAfee Anti-Virus for up-to-the-day virus and spyware protection.

On top of that - for the totally paranoid - one may use Adaware and Spybot - both highly recommended in the computer press.

I have all this stuff installed on my machine. The only one that runs in real time is Norton ANti-virus. I use the others periodically for spot-checks. They've never had to clean-up anything. I visit quite a variety of websites, but admittedly they are all quite "mainstream" - however - again to be totally paranoid - nothing is necessarily immune from external interference that propagates itself to other peoples' machines if not caught quickly.

This is all about risk and probabilities, which from my experience of the past 15 years is very low - and if something happens usually there are relatively painless remedies.

I have no way of knowing for sure, but I strongly suspect the number of real horror stories is an extremely small percentage of total internet usage however measured.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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61Dynamic

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« Reply #31 on: April 11, 2006, 11:31:50 am »

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I have no way of knowing for sure, but I strongly suspect the number of real horror stories is an extremely small percentage of total internet usage however measured.
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I can tell you as someone who has worked in the field of IT and know people who still do that that is by no means even remotely the case. The average computer user is quite clueless about security and other technical issues. Heck, many people don't even know what a web browser is thinking the blue E on their desktop or MSN.com is the internet (my Dad is an example of the latter) just because that is the default setup. In order to follow best practices and to know to use certain forms of security software, you have to first know something about computers.

This is why whenever someone asks me computer advice I recommend them to use a Mac if they are not technically inclined (I recommend Macs here for other reasons). Sometimes people don't listen because they buy based off bottom price or are just unfamiliar with Apple (different = scary). Naturally, it is not long before they start asking why their computer is running slow.
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kbolin

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« Reply #32 on: April 11, 2006, 12:22:56 pm »

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Naturally, it is not long before they start asking why their computer is running slow.

Why do kids have to download crap and infect their computer all the time?      I can talk to them until I'm blue in the face and it still doesn't matter.  "Oh no dad we didn't download anything!".  Yah right.... Kazaa comes preinstalled.

Then they get mad at me when I come along and format their computer to clean everything up.  Hah... maybe they'll learn.  

All I can say is I'm glad my computers are separted by both a hardware & software firewall.      With over 20 years of IT experience and owning home computers I've had more challenges with hardware failure than any internet born viruses.  It's not a matter of if my hardware will fail... but when.

Kelly
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