choice of computer hardware for digital editing

Having recently acquired a high spec DSLR I should like to upgrade my

computer to something capable of handling the big files. I have been

loking at the Dell Precission 670 and the HP Pavillion w5161 or one of

the Fujitzu multimedia centres (to run Adobe Photoshop CS2) but find

it difficult to know what to buy. Your recommendations for specific

machines (these or others)would be greatly appreciated.

Macintosh G5.

> Macintosh G5

 

An excellent idea. The G5 is a dead-end platform because of Apple's switch to Intel. There will be no new G* software. Security may be better than on Windows, but other than the fancy schmancy box and "buy a prepackaged lifestyle from Apple"-behavior there really isn't a good, solid reason to go with Apple.

 

Try an Athlon 64 with 1.5+ gigs of memory. Yummy. And relatively cheap.

Gateway 827GM (Circuit city) or similar HP machine with 3500+ Athlon 64 and 1.5G of memory. Be sure the memory is in matched pairs so the dual channel access feature works correctly. These are multimedia machines running XP Multimedia edition and are lots of fun if you want to fool with DVDs and related stuff. Plenty of horsepower for any reasonable digital editing, but you might want to get bigger/faster hard drives and a decent backup method if you don't find CDs or DVDs sufficient. Excellent bang for the buck.

EDWARD- I am always surprise about close mind people saying thing about

computer.....You

dont buy a Mac computer for its < fancy schmancy box and prepackaged lifestyle from

Apple> you buy a Apple because you believe that its is the best thing your money can buy,

for the quality of the machine itself AND its security....but also because it is so simple to

use.

 

So Edward, i like to know YOUR solid reason to buy a PC.....it maybe good, but dont give

me the < it is cheaper that a mac, or Apple switch to Intel bla bla bla....give me a solid one

please.

 

Oh and Rob, buy whatever you can afford and anything that your circle of friend could help

you with! If they all have Mac, why go with PC...and vice versa.

This not an argument Mac versus PC. I have and use Mac and

Pc at home. I have and use Mac and Pc at work. If you want to

spend your time doing work on your photos get a Mac .. if you

want to spend your time chasing malwares and viruses and

fixing stuffs... get a Pc..... your call...

Oh, for pity's sake -- can't anyone ask a simple question without it degrading into

platform bashing?

 

Suffice it to say any computer you buy today is a dead-end platform. As soon as you buy it

Dell will announce a new model twice as powerful for half the money.

 

Windows Vista 2010 Mk II will probably require 3 terabytes of quantum RAM and Mac OS

10.9975 "Saber-Tooth" will require dual quad-core turbo Xeon CPUs to install (slightly

more if you want support for your sub-dermal iPod femto implant).

 

Seriously, it doesn't really matter anymore. Pretty much any name-brand computer you

buy nowadays will do the trick -- just get as much RAM as you can. And a nice display.

 

Personally, I prefer a Mac (I use a 20" G5 iMac) for day to day use. But I have a bunch of

Dell machines, too, and would recommend them if you want a PC.

This last time, I opted to go with raw computing power and I/O speed. As a PC person, this meant looking at work stations. As it turns out, HP and IBM make a series of reasonably priced dual-core and dual-processor work stations. I purchased a 3.6 GHz HP WX4200 for the price of a mini-tower 3 years before. It will hold more RAM than I will ever use - I have 2G of fast DDRII at present (maxed out for Photoshop).

 

The only software I have that specifically uses dual-processor technology is Adobe Premiere Pro. It's about 4x as fast for video than my older, 1.5 GHz tower.

 

Besides speed, work stations come without add-on software, which is usually worthless anyway. You also have a choice of video cards (128Mb, 3-D enhanced is recommended by Adobe) and disk drives (SATA vs SCSI). I find SATA is fast enough for storage, and use an 18 Gb SCSI for a fast scratch drive.

 

Some things I don't like about Dell - the hardware is shoddy, the cases open like a Chinese puzzle (the HP is made to be opened). Dell substitutes components from the cheapest bidder, at any time, without warning. Some Dell computers require very expensive upgrades, like memory.

 

I don't have a problem with worms and virus. First, I run Norton Internet Security (with anti-Virus) and keep it up to date. Secondly, I don't open cutesy greeting cards, chain mail or spam messages. My email is set to "plain text" so that my return address is not snagged by embedded scripts or images.

 

It's not clear to me if OS/X is that much better, or if hackers find it not worth while to go after only 4% of the installed base of computers. Maybe it's more fun to go "Bill-bashing." I do find it advantageous that there are so many more software titles available to me. Software for the Mac is generally outstanding - just there's not that much variety. I like the open architecture of PC's and the wide variety of resources. I never liked the need to join a sympathetic users' group for Mac support.

Perhaps my generic computer-buying advice would be helpful here: whatever you get, buy the slowest processor available on the shelf (or web page,) then get twice the memory that is offered with that model. The performance difference between the slowest and fastest processor offered on any given shelf is negligable; twice the memory is ALWAYS noticeable, and usually affordable.

Get the platform you are use to. My friend has a G5 with 2.5 Gb ram but I find it very hard to use because I'm too use to XP whereas he finds XP confusing. I prefer PCs because I can configure them the way I want to, something harder to do on a mac. I would suggest that you go to a good computer shop, tell them what you want (you can specify top quality components or raid 0 for instance) and then let them build one up just for you. It's usually cheaper than buying someone elses "superblitz" computer which usually is more expensive and quite often uses second quality components to inflate their profits.

> So Edward, i like to know YOUR solid reason to buy a PC.....it maybe good, but dont give me the < it is cheaper that a mac, or Apple switch to Intel bla bla bla....give me a solid one please.

 

Sure. I can order a motherboard + dualcore 64bit processor for 445$.

 

The cheapest, complete 64bit dual G5 system costs 2000$. I'll admit that the G5 system contains a hard drive, dvd burner and memory and a semi-ok graphics card, but are you trying to tell me that all those things are worth 1555$?

 

The dualcore is faster.

 

A whole dualcore will eat about 150W, while the dual G5 eats 300W.

 

The dualcore isn't obsolete and useless in the future.

 

Will you be wanting any more reasons or are these enough?

For the obsolesce comment of the G5 I'd suggest a google search on "universal binary".

Just a fat binary.

 

One can only wonder how long the companies will bother making those. Of course, if you run Linux you can recompile your code to run on any platform but I doubt people who buy overpriced Apples are going to run Linux.

 

Linux isn't "hip" and "white" enough.

Actually, almost everyone I know in the open-source community that writes software for Unix

and Linux deployment uses a Mac. Most use PowerBooks but Linus Torvalds uses a dual 2-

GHz G5 desktop (running Linux in his case -- most folks just use OS X).

 

Linux runs nicely on PowerPC architecture, too.