MAC or PC for photography?

I have worked with MACS, and do like them, but financially I would prefer to go

with a PC. Does anyone have any recommendations on computers and monitors?

Right now my workflow is all over the place and I really need to buckle down and

start a brand new workflow. Does anyone have any thoughts on the amount of

memory, what type of PC, what type of flat screen for color callibration, etc?

I am pretty confident I want to stay away from a MAC and I'd like to have a

larger flat screen monitor that doesn't break the bank, but also isn't cheap.

Can you name some brands and models I could look into?

 

Thanks.

Rachel, how much have you budgeted for your new computer?

youshould really look at a 20' 2.16Ghz iMac.

"...youshould really look at a 20' 2.16Ghz iMac..."

 

She already said she wants to stay away from Macs. What part of that you don't understand?

 

Rachel, I suggest you go to a reputable dealer (eg dell.com, etc) and view their online configuration options. You can't go wrong with one of their mid-range packages, just make sure you get at least 2GB or RAM and a sizable hardsisk. They'll have a selection of screens, make sure you get a premium video card with onboard memory so that it doesn't eat up you main RAM for video.

 

Good luck

"MAC or PC for photography?"

"I am pretty confident I want to stay away from a MAC"

 

Then why ask Mac or PC? Seems like you want to start a flame war and Ronaldo bit.

For serious post-processing you'll find it advantagious to get a PC with at least 2GB RAM - a Core II CPU would be an added benefit. I recently added a Dell 24" LCD monitor to my desktop - it's one of the ones that you can swivel between portrait and landscape orientations - it makes a WORLD of difference then processing large vertical images.

<I>...but financially I would prefer to go with a PC</I><P>For the type of computer that a

serious photographer would use Macintosh is cheaper then a Windows machine by far. The

PC "is cheaper" routine is long gone, that is unless you buy an eMachine or such from

BestBuy or costco.

The iMac reccommended is a pretty good deal.

"The PC "is cheaper" routine is long gone"

 

Rachel, this is true (more or less).

 

But whatever you go with, stay away from any CPU that needs a huge fan. The Intel Core Duo (and whatever the equivalent AMD is) runs cooler, uses less energy and is more powerful than the Pentium 4. The Mac as you know uses only Intel Core CPUs these days.

 

In the long run, I'd recommend the Mac platform for professionals. Think of the PC as a niche product for people who like to build their own computers. ;-)

Where's Scott Eaton? We need some really good Apple bashing, now that the stock is

historically high and they are increasing their market share of computers (not just phones

and iPods). I miss the boy.

 

Andrew Rodney

Hi!

 

You can get a nice refurb Dell for about $800. (Intel Core2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, etc.) Yes, the $2400 MacPro is a better machine, but the $1600 difference will buy two very good lenses.

 

IMacs are neat. They are excellent value, and I recommend them all the time, but desktops (Apple or Wintel) give you a lot more upgrade options which can be very useful for dealing with large collections of images, supporting dual large monitors, etc.

 

A small bit of Apple-bashing, for those who really need a fix. While Macs now use a great deal of PC compatible hardware, you still have to get Mac-approved optical drives and other components, which can be both expensive and limiting.

>...financially I would prefer to go with a PC.

 

Wise move. I frequently check and compare prices, and you just can't buy a Mac, feature for feature, for as low a price as a PC.

 

>Does anyone have any recommendations on computers and monitors

 

Avoid emachines. Other than that, look for a good deal in the Sunday ads, HP, Compaq, Sony, Dell, Acer all have reasonable quality. For monitors, the popular high end choices on this forum are NEC and Eizo. A good Viewsonic or Samsung with 8-bit color (16.7 million true colors) is a good 'budget' choice.

 

>Does anyone have any thoughts on the amount of memory, what type of PC, what type of flat screen for color callibration

 

2-3 GB of RAM for a PC with a 32-bit OS (e.g. WinXP) or 4+ GB if you choose XP or Vista 64-bit OS. A sweet spot for hard drive sizes is 250-320 GB. Photoshop (both full version and Elements) has a plug-in that specifically makes use of dual core processors, so I highly recommend a Core2 Duo.

 

Consider having your local small PC shop custom-build you a PC. They can advise and spec out exactly what you need, usually provide great service, they'll use better quality parts than ANY mass market manufacturer, and it helps the local economy.

"but financially I would prefer to go with a PC" Don't forget to budget money for anti-

spyware, Anti virus and recovery software.

<p>I'd wait a month or so until deciding on a purchase. There's rumours (very, very speculative and totally unofficial rumours, but rumours nonetheless) of new iMacs coming out on or about Aug. 7th.

<p>If you're not in a rush, it might be worth waiting until <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/">leopard (OSX 10.5)</a> is released in October. There's a lot of very interesting new features in leopard. The ones I'm looking forward to the most are <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/timemachine.html">time machine</a> (a backup tool) and the desperately needed rewrite of <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/finder.html">the finder</a>.

<p>However, I'm seriously biased. I've been planning to buy a new machine strictly for photography, and after three years of using Linux exclusively as my desktop, I have no intention of ever leaving the Unix world. (Translation: Windows is dead to me.)

There are excellent anti-spyware, anti-virus programs available for PC. Avast, AVG, and others.

 

Budget: $0.

 

Next?

Macs are more expensive. Case closed. If you're all budget minded then you'll need to get a PC. The software on the two is going to be the same (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc).

 

Having said that, I'd sell my camera to come up with money for a Mac. You can do slideshows, burn amazingly professional dvds, etc with a Mac. You can do this with a PC too, but I wouldn't want to. Get an iMac. YOu'll thank us.

I priced an iMac against an identically configured Dell (i.e., CPU, memory, hard drive, monitor size) a few months back and found the price differential was about $50. Given the issues raised regarding Vista in professional reviews (not just anecdotes) and ongoing security issues, I purchased a 24" iMac 2.16 GHz. I am sure I could have found a cheaper PC for the same specs from another vendor, but I wasn't confident I would find a source I would be comfortable with, which could well be a personal problem. ;-)

 

My transition from PC to Mac hasn't always been smooth, but it has been quite manageable. I certainly enjoy the ease of installing/uninstalling programs, especially trial versions, and the lack of system (not to mention monetary, above comment regarding freeware notwithstanding) overhead for security monitoring. YMMV, of course.

Just saw on "Lab with Leo" that th Mack handles Colour matching better than PC. I am happy with my XP

 

errol

"Where's Scott Eaton?"

 

He's starting out at dpreview, mostly in the PC forum. Little by little, day by day there he is getting more and more, um, Scottlike.

If you can get a PC with XP installed, its your best money to performance ratio. But those are becoming increasingly hard to find.

 

I wouldn't go near Vista with a 10-ft pole though. In that case, the Macs price tag is probably worth avoiding the headaches.

If you need a high-end performance unit, then the PC is the only way to go. With 2000$, you can build a monster desktop with a decent 24' lcd monitor. Intel has been dropping down the price of performance CPU recently and harddrive is just so cheap (recently bought 320G+500G SATA II for little over 150$). Video card like nvidia 8800ultra is dirt cheap. You can easily get 4g ram for no more than 200$. A full tower case with 650w power supply. There are so many things you can do with a PC

It's about the OS, not the hardware...

The Nvidia 8800 Ultra sells between $600 and $800. With respect, I wouldn't consider a video card to be "dirt cheap" if it costs as much as a brand-new mid-range PC!

 

As long as a videocard has the physical connections for the monitor(s) of one's choice, it's irrelevant for photography. I'm using a bargain-basement Nvidia 6600GT that sells for about $60, and it's driving a dual-monitor colour-calibrated 3200x1200 setup just fine. If one is going to build their own machine for photography and not play games, go cheap on the videocard. You won't need it. The only applications I've heard of that use a videocard for image processing are all on OSX using CoreImage.

 

Seconding Adam's XP recommendation. If one must use Windows, stick with XP. Vista is unproven at best. (My opinion is that Vista is this decade's Millenium Edition.)

Let's try and pull a few tidbits out of this. I work with a lot of macs and pcs at work, for both high end and everyday production needs (not just photographic).

 

The iMac is a ridiculously awesome value. It offers a lot for the price, no question. But what it _doesn't_ offer is expandability. If you compare one of them to a comparably configured, say, Dell, then you have to subtract the "value" of the lack of expandability. Other than adding more RAM (and it's only got 2 slots, both of which are taken up by default by Apple), you won't be able to add a scratch disc, much less have a separate system and files volume as is commonly configured on photo-editing workstations. I know that you can slap external hard drives on there with Firewire, but Firewire 400 isn't as fast as putting a serial ATA drive in the case.

 

So that leaves the Mac Pro. Which everyone agrees here is far more expensive in comparison. It's a monster, and it'll give you ridiculous power, but it's a lot of dough.

 

My PC workstation, fully color-calibrated and accurate, Core 2, 4GB RAM, system, scratch, and files drives on serial ATA, was indeed self-built so I can't compare prices from off-the-shelf. But I also don't even have it on the internet. Not because I am that scared of viruses (I manage 600 PCs at work. I haven't been hit with a single vulnerability exploit in 5 years), but because A/V software takes its toll on performance. If the Dell is in fact $50 less than an iMac, as someone mentioned, then the expendability is really worthwhile, IMO.

 

allan

The 24" iMac is an awesome image processor. It has a choice of nVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT

graphics processor with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM using PCI Express or the optional NVIDIA

GeForce 7600 GT graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM using PCI Express. It

also has a FW800 port so external drives and connection speed should be a non-issue.

Internal drive options are 250, 500, or 750 GB SATA.

 

To me, the stability of OS X is worth $$ over a PC with XP.