I never received any e-mails indicating responses were added since my last post on the 12th. Probably just as well as it seems this thread has degraded into a nerd-fight over RAID!
Skipping past the RAID debate and back to the topic at hand:
Daniel,
OK, I'll start.
How about the many applications that you were using on your PC:
- Adobe products -> did you have to buy new licenses,
- ...
Didn't you find that many applications available for PC are not for the Mac?
That lack of application, and the portential cost of migrating licenses are the main reasons why I don't see myself seriously considering that tempting quad core G5 with 8 GB RAM...
Besides:
- are there still SCSI cards available for the G5? Would I be able to connect my Imacon scanner?
- is my Samsung LCD screen usable?
Thank you in advance for your feedback.
Regards,
Bernard
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The only Adobe Product that I had was PS CS2 and that did not require a new license. I simply filled out a form and agreed in a contract to destroy the PC copy. They then sent me a full Mac version in the mail.
I have a Po license for Noise Ninja 2 which is good for both platforms.
Focal Blade is not available on the mac but I never use it anymore anyway since I have PK. Unfortunately, PK did need a new license but I was able to use a coupon code for a "two-platform license" which brought the price down to $66.
There are many apps on the PC that are not available on the Mac, however there are equivalents that are just as good or in most cases (for me) better than the PC counterparts. (I have also noticed that the overall quality level of available software on the mac exceeds that on the PC. Particularly with independent developers.) On the PC I used SmartFTP as it was the simplest and most cost-effective FTP tool I could find but on the Mac I bought Transmit which is worlds better in functionality and ease of use.
Other applications I have found open-source equivalents for that are far better than anything available on the PC. One example is in Instant messaging. On the PC the best available was Trillian but it required a license to access its full features. On the Mac I use Adium X.
The only thing I have not found a replacement for on the Mac has been in web development. I used TopStyle 3 on the PC and have yet to find anything remotely as good on the Mac. Odd since many of the top web developers are Mac users... BBEdit comes close but it is a heavy-duty all-around text editor and lacks some of the CSS-centric functionality that TopStyle has and it lacks auto-complete which is a huge time-saving feature.
I should make a note on QuickBooks. It has a Mac equivalent but it is a turd. It lacks many of the features found on the PC version and I've heard it's quite buggy and poorly put together. Basically it exists just so the can claim they support Macs. For this I run the windows version in Virtual PC.
(It's funny but the most stable install I've ever used of Windows is my installation in VPC on my Mac)
In summary, the cost in software for switching to Mac was about $300 USD. $200 of that was VPC.
Most of the software I had on the PC not mentioned here was security and maintenance software. All of which is either unnecessary (anti-virus/anti-spyware) on the Mac or built-in and automated (maintenance) on the mac.
I can't answer your question about SCSI support. You'll have to ask some Apple dealers or poke around some apple-centric forums for that one. Apple dropped SCSI support a wile ago so I'm sure people have found ways around it. Mac nerds are quite hard-core and resourceful in utilizing the Unix underpinnings in OS X I've noticed.
All new Macs (sans the iMac) use a standard DVI connector so your LCD will work just fine.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I thought that CS2 could only use 2 gig of RAM?
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On the PC that is correct. The standard version of Windows is 32-bit which limits it to a max of 3GB of ram (2GB for WinXP Home) and PS is limited to 2GB. On the 64-bit version of XP (with a 64-bt CPU) PS can utilize 3GB if enough RAM is installed (6GB max useable by XP-64). Someone mentioned a switch in the boot.ini to allow more ram to be used on a standard windows install but that may not work on all computers. PS on the Mac can use up to 4GB.