Apologize if this is the wrong place for this query.
My situation: I have a creaking 4-yr-old Dual G4 1.42 GHz PowerMac tower that I plan to replace this year. It takes forever to do anything with this computer, it's so slow. I will probably run MacOS Server on it and use it for storage, etc. The question is, what to replace it with?
At least in theory the current PowerMac towers are awesomely powerful, and have the major advantage of being able to accomodate scads of RAM. However, they are pricey and large, and relatively noisy.
I've always assumed that for heavy-duty image processing I'd be better served by a PowerMac than by an iMac, but I'm rethinking. Their performance numbers seem pretty strong, and even the largest 24" screen model would probably save me a bunch of cash over a tricked-out PowerMac tower.
The one immediate problem I see is that, as far as I can tell, the top-end iMac can accomodate "only" 3 gigs of RAM. I regularly work with image files of 1.2 to 1.5 gigs (scanned MF film) and expect that during this computer's lifetime I'll be using large files from whatever MF digiback or hi-megapixel camera I own in the near future. I also usually have iView open along with Photoshop and now, probably Lightroom as well, along with a web browser.
As for HDD, the iMac's current largest drive is 750GB; this is less of an issue because I expect to use external storage of some sort anyway as part of a storage/backup redundancy setup.
Stats and numbers aside, what is your experience with these machines doing the sorts of things i describe? Is an iMac going to do the job for me or do I need to spring for the P-Mac?
Thanks in advance.