quote:

Originally posted by John MacLean Photography:
Steve,

I think the biggest limitation with the iMac is the 2GB RAM max, and no PCI card ability along with the FW400 only, isn't great either. I think I'd opt for a G5 tower if you can.

And I'd probably shy away from Apple RAM just due to the price. Crucial makes good RAM. It's not the cheapest, but it's supposedly top shelf. I've typically have bought mine via ramseeker.com from either Data Memory Systems or 1-800-4-MEMORY. I'm sure others will poo-poo this suggestion as it's not always the best stuff. But if it fails they replace it. I've had that too!
. . . . .

Good afternoon John,

Ramseeker is a good resource. Maybe I have been lucky, but I only had one RAM module ever fail. That one came through OWC with their lifetime warranty. While not too fast with giving me a RMA, once they had it sent back to them, they were fast getting me a replacement. Buy the RAM with the new machine from Apple, and you only get the one year warranty.

Thanks to everyone for responding.

Sounds like the G5 tower is a better option. It just means spending more.

But I guess power, speed, and versatility come at a price.

Will have to research it more and figure out which way to go.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

S.

John,

GB, MB, smegabytes. What's a factor of 1000 among friends?

Sorry about that.

Bruce

if you charge by the hour... buy the slower one.....

I'd get the imac and ram it out... and pick up a few external hd's.

The 20" works great on location!

and if you paint it black, people with think you got it after the next macworld!

Hello All,

Well, I looked into the towers a bit more.

I can get a tower with the 2.0Ghz Dual Core with a 250GB HD and 512 of RAM for $2.2K. Add on another $300-$600 for RAM and we're looking at $3K after the shipping. Add a 20" monitor and a couple of G-Tech HD's and I've just spent $5K.

With the iMac I can get a 20" with the Dual Core chip, 1GB of RAM and a 500GB HD for the same $2.2, which would keep me in the $3K range after more RAM and the external HD's.

Hmmm. Decisions, decisions.

I guess the iMac is somewhat limited in terms of RAM capacity and peripheral options/speed, and the tower is just a bit of a stretch economically.

I had planned on this being a desktop replacement, as I have a 667mhz Titanium PB for location, but it had occurred to me that the iMac would be easy enough to transport for location work, especially those multi-day events I sometimes cover around the island during which I have a media HQ in a hotel somewhere from which I disseminate real time coverage. But for that kinda thing I could just as easily transport a desktop.

Hmmm.

One thing front and center in my mind is that as much as I don't want what I buy to become yesterday's technology tomorrow, with what I'm currently using, anything is going to feel like going from a VW Bug to a Porsche Targa.

OK. Final question as I hope to make this purchase this week...

Are the issues with the Dual Core chip (CS2 glitches, Rosetta, and some other things mentioned here which I really don't understand) big enough to keep me from buying any machine with that chip?

Should I go with a less costly single or dual chips previously offered as top line stuff from Mac so as to ensure smooth performance with CS2?

Or, are the issues with the new chip so minor that I'll be much better off with one later when CS3 comes along, when I might feel like I missed the boat with the Dual Core Intel if I go with the older chip(s)?

Any opinions, as always, are much appreciated.

Grassy ass a todos!

S.

From what I've heard around, by the time all the issues with Photoshop, Intel chips and quad processors are settled, you'll be in the market for a new machine again anyway. At least that's how I'm going about it.

Get the best you can afford that does today what you need it to. There's always something better just around the corner.


''Everybody talks about quantum mechanics, but nobody ever does anything about it. Until now. Eggheads at the University of Michigan have come up with a computer chip that uses quantum mechanics, that strange science that says yes, you can be in two places at once. The Michigan dudes created a chip that's the size of a baby's fingernail which is more of an experiment than a real world application. Bottom line, it's the first baby step on the way to computers which will be thousands of times faster than those we use today. Makes my head spin. And mine, too.''

quote:

The main concern that I have is that the chipset and OS in the new iMac is 32 bit, as opposed to 64 bit in the powerpc G5. Intel is slated to release 64 bit CPUs later this year. Although I'm not on the "inside," I think that Apple will adopt those sooner than later. They would do this just becuase Dell, HP et al. will almost certainly implement 64 bit systems for high end users, based on either AMD or Intel chips.

Intel already has 64-bit, dual-core processors, and Dell HP etc. are using them. Actually shipping new iMacs with the Core Duo chip was a surprise though. I'm guessing the non-laptop form factor made it easier to implement, the actual chips have only been the market less than a month.

quote:

If I'm right, the consequence for users is that the transition will involve 3-4 steps. The first appears to be software that runs with Rosetta (i.e., emmulation rather than native) and the second step will be software that runs natively on 32 bit dual core Intel chips. Adobe may get to this point about the time Intel releases 64 bit dual core CPU's. The final step will be 64 bit dual core chips and software that runs natively on it. Looking at Intel's previous struggles with new chips, I guess that it could easily be 1-2 years to get to this point. When will Adobe PS be ready

Apple's Universal Binary SDK allows developers to compile two versions of the same application - one that runs natively on PPC and another on Intel. CS3 will certainly work that way, but will CS4? At some point Apple and everyone else is going to abandon the PPC systems, just as they abandoned the 68000. I don't envy any Mac developers right now - they're essentially forced to develop for and support 2 different platforms.

64-bit is a whole different animal. My guess is that it'll be a very long time before a native 64-bit Photoshop becomes a reality for any platform. At this point they'd have to support 6 different versions to have full compatibility with hardware on the market now - 32-bit Mac/PPC, 64-bit Mac/PPC, 32-bit Mac/Intel, 64-bit Mac/Intel (coming soon), 32-bit Windows and 64-bit Windows. I don't think Adobe will go fully 64-bit until Microsoft and Apple do, and that's not going to happen for years, if ever.