Topic: What Computer do you use? (Read 36082 times)

llama · « **Reply #40 on:** February 09, 2005, 02:17:01 pm »

Games do mess things up, particularly the relationship between games, video drivers, sound drivers & DirectX. Take those out of the equation, use common sense and Win2000 and WinXP are plenty solid and reliable.

But boy are those Macs pretty. :D

* I can't belive the forum removed the word formed by rearranging these letters: nmad

Jonathan Wienke · « **Reply #41 on:** February 10, 2005, 11:29:08 am »

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Yes thats right I lied. Not! "That's not fully accruate" or something along those lines would be more diplomatic...

What I said was accurate giving the typical situation where people install and remove software on their PC (thus the reference to DLLs).

I don't see the word "lied" anywhere in my post. One can make a statement that is factually incorrect without being a liar, like when given incorrect information that is believed to be true. The statement you made is incorrect, but that doesn't make you a liar.

With PC or Mac, constantly installing and uninstalling software that is not task-related will decrease system stability over time. Knowledgeable professionals limit the installation of non-task-related software on work machines for this reason. (This, and licensing issues, are the reason most corporate IT departments forbid users to install software on company machines. It's the #1 cause of help desk calls if you don't implement such a policy.) You can have a perfectly stable OS/app/hardware configuration, and still crash the machine if someone installs a buggy game or malicious spyware. In that situation, it makes no sense to blame the OS or hardware for a problem caused by third-party crapware. IMO your whole argument is a bit of a strawman for that reason.

61Dynamic · « **Reply #42 on:** February 24, 2005, 10:22:17 pm »

Here's a couple very interesting article at AnandTech I just stumbled upon a day ago. It's about a PC users experience with a Mac.

Haven't read part 2 yet, but I'll link it to you anyhoot.

A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective
A Month with a Mac - Part II: The Mobile Experience

kaelaria · « **Reply #43 on:** March 01, 2005, 02:02:52 pm »

I feel sorry for all the mac people that converted because of so many problem with virii, crashes, etc. - because when mac virii become more popular (give it a little time) you will be back to square one with excuses

61Dynamic · « **Reply #44 on:** March 06, 2005, 01:25:59 pm »

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When I told him I was taking classes in photoshop using OSX on a G4 and PSCS, and I had more crashes in one semester than I'd had on Wintel machines for the last several years, he was incredulous.

Sounds like they were using an older version of OSX. By all rights when OSX first came out it pretty much was still in beta. There were quite a few kinks that needed ironing. The latest version of the OS is much less problematic.

Mark D Segal · « **Reply #45 on:** April 07, 2005, 11:53:52 am »

I'm using a Dell 8200 PC, which has some severe limitations for Photoshop CS, but works OK in the final analysis as long as one doesn't depend on speed to make a living. Instead of starting a new thread, I am looking for a bit of relevant advice to improve the system incrementally until I change to something better.

I am told that if my second hard-drive were more up-to-date (the one I have in there now dates from 1998) it would improve scratch disk performance. (I have 1.56 GB RAM now and another RAM up-grade for this machine is not worth the cost under any circumstances - it uses extremely expensive RDRAM.) I can install a relatively new 7200 RPM drive at no cost and the mechanics of doing so are easy. I am wondering however whether there are any system issues anyone is aware of that I need to watch out for (Windows XP Home). That is, do I only need to remove the old one and stick in the new one, format it and assume it will be recognized, not wreck performance of anything else and in fact work compatibly with all the stuff that now works fine (e.g. MS Office, PSCS, etc.)? Any advice from experience?

mikeseb · « **Reply #46 on:** May 04, 2005, 04:49:26 pm »

I had been an IBM devotee since my first computer in 1992. I built my own the last few times, but switched to Mac in 2003 after nearly melting down in frustration trying to capture, edit, and DVD-burn digital video on my Windows machine, which did most other things decently running Windows 2000 and then XP Pro.

Switching was relatively painless, except that importing old Quicken financial data from the Win to the Mac versions proved impractical (Intuit has a virtual monopoly on personal financial mgmt software and I find not very responsive to its customers) and error-prone, while my QuickBooks migration was painless. I quickly found Mac equivalents of the other apps i usually ran, so no real issues there.

I would say that my Mac crashes rarely; if an application goes awry, it can be handled more gracefully without bringing the whole house down. Day to day operation for me is smoother and more intuitive with the Mac than with any windows version i'd used including XP Pro.

On the whole, however, I think I have had more "kernel panics" and other machine-OS interaction problems with the Mac than with the PC, and I agree with a previous respondent there that those situations are nearly always due to some piece of hardware giving the Mac indigestion.

I am satisfied with my choice of systems, and my wife is going to buy her own Mac pretty soon; I will likely upgrade my dual 1.42 GHz G4 Powermac by the end of the year or early 2006.

DarkPenguin · « **Reply #47 on:** June 21, 2005, 12:58:27 am »

Windows to Run on Intel Processors

Jonathan Wienke · « **Reply #48 on:** February 04, 2005, 11:41:40 am »

Dual-CPU AMD machine with 2GB RAM. At the time of purchase (3 years ago) it had a better performance/cost ratio than Intel or Apple. It's still a very decent performer.

Stef_T · « **Reply #49 on:** February 05, 2005, 10:54:37 pm »

Mr. Spoecker,

What are your impressions of your Mac, you like it, what are your specs? Also, have you ever used a PC, and how does it stack up?

Thank you, I'd be a big help if you could help me out,

Stefan.

Jonathan Wienke · « **Reply #50 on:** February 06, 2005, 11:35:26 pm »

I think it's because Windows/PC has pretty much caught up to Apple with regard to OS stability and user-friendly interface. Windows has always had a wider variety of hardware and software available, and until Apple gets over its proprietary mentality it will always be at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace and be a niche player.

cgordon · « **Reply #51 on:** February 08, 2005, 06:50:30 pm »

sorry, i could've made it clearer - all my prices were in cdn $. i do see your point, and for me, many of those g5 features are not helpful for improved photo editing. and that $ difference is still way to large for the differences in components, in my humble opinion - since i didn't mention that my motherboard/video card also support firewire (maybe not 800, can't remember), and dual monitors.

i'm not trying to discredit you, you definitely do have a point. we all have to make our own decisions for what's best for ourselves.

cgordon · « **Reply #52 on:** February 09, 2005, 08:21:41 am »

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Cheap and cheerful is one of the things PCs do really well, and Windows goes along for the ride. That end of the market is largely irrelevant to shoppers after systems for running Photoshop I imagine.

i respectfully disagree, and this is what i was hinting at with my post. i got my pc for well under $1000 cdn taxes in, for a system that runs photoshop cs very well for images under 250M. and i will spend a $100 - $200 for more ram later on to make it even better.

the base g5 is $2200 (cdn) after tax, for many components that don't seem to me to help photoshop run any faster. and since my system is used only for photoshop, there just wasn't any point in me spending all that more money. i could use that to get even better components and be running photoshop as fast as i need (for the moment).

i am not debating which systems are better. and i'm not saying that my system is faster than the base g5. i am just saying i think the price/performance for photoshop performance is quite large at the moment - it is possible to spend much less on a pc that runs photoshop well, compared to a mac/g5.

llama · « **Reply #53 on:** February 09, 2005, 04:55:57 pm »

Dinarius,

I suggest you look at the more objective, quantitative review sites out there (e.g., www.anandtech.com) to see which CPUS do what best and what role RAM has in various applications.

As for photo editing and video cards, I don't think anything released to market in the last 3 or 4 years will leave you wanting. 2D performance has pretty much plateaued with respect to speed. However, with respect to quality, Matrox is reputed as having exception 2D quality. Similarly, if you have coin, a professional card (ATI's FireGL line and nVidia's Quadro) also concentrate on fidelity over speed. Again, the war is in the 3D, not 2D.

If all you do is photoshop, surf, office, and email, I'd find an ATI card with 128MB of on-board memory, no fan, WHQL certified drivers, and be happy.

N

aseltzer · « **Reply #54 on:** February 10, 2005, 08:28:30 am »

Stef - I recently bought a Mac G4 after a decade plus of PC hardware. In my personal feeling, it is a preferable machine for graphics and for that matter, everything else. Since Photoshop is virtually identical on both platforms, I cite the stability of the Mac OS as the main reason for my preference.

The poster below is correct about the fact that, at the end of the day, you cannot tell which platform created the image. We do have excellent choices. While I haven't benchmarked my PCs versus my Mac, I am content in knowing the Mac gets the job done and is preferable to work with. If it were slower in executing a Photoshop filter relative to a high end Pentium or Athlon, in terms of my total workflow that difference remains negligible.

Another advantage the we have today is the inexpensive PC. This makes it feasible to buy a Mac for graphics and whatever else you prefer it for and buying a separate PC for those tasks that will only run on a PC. After you factor the cost of Virtual PC and the time lost due to emulation, it approaches the cost of just buying an inexpensive PC.

Indeed we do have some great choices.

- Arthur

tsummers · « **Reply #55 on:** February 25, 2005, 05:28:56 pm »

I was a PC/windows guy for about 5 years, I got very tired of the sysem crashing every time I tryed to open 3 or more programs at the same time.
After much gnashing of teeth I spent the money to go with a G5 and Apple 20" cd, It's been the decision I ever made, the machine just works and has not crashed once in the 6 months that I've had it. I'm now a happy Mac guy all the way.

tshort · « **Reply #56 on:** March 06, 2005, 12:31:54 pm »

Interesting thread - addresses a debate I've been having myself for the last year or so.

As a new digital guy, I've been researching all sorts of tech/gear questions, including computing platform. A local working digital photo artist friend of mine, who scans at hi res 8x10 and 4x5 color negs into 100 Mb+ files, swears by Macs. When I pressed him as to why he thought the Mac was so great, his initial claim was that it didn't crash as much. When I told him I was taking classes in photoshop using OSX on a G4 and PSCS, and I had more crashes in one semester than I'd had on Wintel machines for the last several years, he was incredulous. But he did allow that the odd Mac crash was not unheard of.

Yeah, I've had my share of "blue screens of death" on various wintel machines over the years, but not so much lately - not any on WinXP that I've been using for last six months.

Anyway, the only reason he could give me for Mac's alleged superiority that sounded even somewhat objective was this: color rendering. He claims Macs render color more accurately than PCs. Now I can't argue that since I haven't done the comparison.

Anyway, having learned window-based computing on the very first Macs (remember when they had two floppy drives??), I have no inherent prejudice against them. But I will say that I found OSX no more or less intuitive than WinXP - I'd say they are about a horse apiece for a newb pc user.

Given that, my investment in a relatively new IBM Thinkpad T-40, running Intel Centrino 1.5Ghz chip, and a brand new ram upgrade to 1Gb, and the MS Office suite for pc platforms, I am committed to making this thing work for digital.

I've just picked up the Adobe Creative Suite 1.3 with PSCS and all the extras it has, and am just now acquainting myself with it on my T-40.

Next step is to get a monitor to use for photo tasks, as my TP's LCD is too small (14.1"). Guess it'll be a CRT, based on posts to this thread - if anyone has any suggestions for specific brands/types, I'd be interested to hear about them.

My $0.02.

-Tom

61Dynamic · « **Reply #57 on:** April 07, 2005, 06:23:28 pm »

Quote

That is, do I only need to remove the old one and stick in the new one, format it and assume it will be recognized, not wreck performance of anything else and in fact work compatibly with all the stuff that now works fine (e.g. MS Office, PSCS, etc.)? Any advice from experience?

In terms of how software interacts with hard drives, little has changed since they were first introduced. Install the new one, format it and you're good to go.

budjames · « **Reply #58 on:** February 27, 2005, 05:53:52 am »

2 months ago I purchased a Dell Precision Workstation 470 with dual Intel Xeon 2.8Ghz processors, 2 GB RAM, running WinXP Pro and a RAID 0 320 GB internal drive. This machine replaced my 3 year old Dell 8200 P4-1.9Ghz.

Running Photoshop CS on this new machine is amazing. CS supports dual processors and every aspect of CS is incredibly faster. The CS Browser refresh is greatly improved since many of my image folders contain hundreds of RAW files shot with my Canon 20D and 1DMk2.

My video card supports dual DVI/Analog displays so when I complete my home office in the basement I'm finishing, I plan on adding a 2nd 21" LCD display.

I've been a Dell customer for 10 years since I had to give up my Mac when I switched careers to become financial planner. Initially, I really missed my Mac, but now WinXP PC's are very good.

Bud James
North Wales, PA

ausoleil · « **Reply #59 on:** April 28, 2005, 09:23:53 am »

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Sonds like he's pandering to you and talking out his back-end.

Yeah, I guess I am since I am a member of Adobe's Open Source group as a corporate member.

And the prices I yielded were directly off of the web sites of both companies. Go figure.

BTW, with our corporate discount we get the Dell machine with a dual processor setup for $2285.75. There's a certain cache' at being IT in a Fortune 100 company and responsible for a few thousand desktops, not to mention a data center that spews out 40 TB of data across the world to a 45 billion dollar business.

Poll

What Computer do you use?

Author Topic: What Computer do you use? (Read 36082 times)

DarkPenguin