Switching to Mac

[nick_r]

My Dell is getting a little long in the tooth, and I bought it before I got into

digital photography so it only has 2 internal drives and a daisy chain of

external drives. I am thinking about moving to a Mac... I have 2 monitors, a 24

inch Dell from a couple years ago and a generic 17 inch LCD that's quite poor.

It seems to me if I want to keep using my monitors, the cheapest thing I can buy

is the stripper Mac Pro for $2300, with no options. At an internet parts dealer

that rhymes with leg, I priced a PC I could build with an Intel Quad Core

processor, 8 GB of Ram and 2.3 Terabytes of storage for $1600, including the OS.

If I tried to configure the Mac with identical aftermarket parts, I would be

well past $3000. Can it really be worth a nearly 100 percent premium? Can I

limp by with a Mac mini or something (I assume I can't have 2 monitors in that

case?). People are really just paying this difference because the OS is much

better?

[pmj]

I've had 2 "no name" PCs and both have had problems: overheating processor, loud processor fan (these problems were not with the same machine), failing power supply, videocard that didn't fit properly. A friend of mine has a "no name" PC and he keeps the side cover off, because otherwise it heats up and the fans make so much noise.

 

My standard, simple HP at the office works just fine.

 

My Power Mac at home also works just fine. It just looks nicer, has a few more options, is quicker to boot and, generally, I like working with it better than with PCs.

[andresainderichin]

Hi Nick! Let me tell you: get a Mac and you'll never look back. I've kicked myself in the butt a zillion times for not doing it earlier. It's not that the OS looks better (it does), or works better (it does), it's the stability. And the fact that you don't need Spam filters and virus checkers and stuff. Even after 18 months, booting up still only takes a few seconds, the system keeps itself clean, hardly ever locks up... The quality of your life is going to improve by an order of magnitude. The Mac Mini doesn't allow for 2 monitors, but then again: it's really not that powerful, and if you want to do a lot of graphics, it's going to be a pain. The switch took me a few weeks to adjust to, but since then it's been plain sailing. Is it worth the premium? I'd put the other way: give me 1600 bucks, and I still wouldn't want the PC. Cheers!

[ken munn]

Not just the OS. Macs come loaded with iLife which is pretty impressive suite of apps that

allow you to do various creative things (including photography, moviemaking, creating DVDs

and music making) in an integrated and moderately intuitive way. I dunno what it would cost

to put that suite on a PC, but not peanuts I guess.

 

I run and old (now ) G5 iMac and it still impresses me, even given that it's driving almost a

terabyte of external storage.

[dave_hoffmann]

People have bought into the propaganda of the Mac. Stick with a PC. I can't remember my PC locking up once in the past 5 years.

[ronald_moravec1]

Not only is it a nice computer, they don`t collect all the viruses. Vista is to be avoided, so you need to find a work around for that.

 

My first computer was a XP pc and it worked well for usual stuff like excell, internet, word, and e-mail.

 

When I got brave and bought a scanner and got into photo processing, it got balky, required constant rebooting or I had to go into the photoshop history and delete everything to keep it running from one pic to the next.

 

As time went on, boot up times got longer and longer and longer. The task manager showed the power consumption at 100% and eventually it would not boot at all. A few weeks back, the power supply failed. The machine is now landfill. Along the way, I did disk cleans and defrags and that helped marginally. Eventually you get tired of doing computer maintenence and not doing fun stuff. I even set it so all the programs would not launch at start up with msconfig. Marginally helpful. I collected viruses that needed removal.

 

Last Aug I got an iMac and in Dec, got the cheapest Macbook portable for travel. Even the Macbook with 80 gb hard drive and 1 gb ram, both stock, will run my photoshop cs3 with raw Nikon D200 files.

 

I would never get a windows machine again for photo work. They work ok for IT departments in a corporate setting where I would just call call someone and they would come and fix it. At home I don`t have an IT guy on ext 5400. Now the stupid thing is my problem.

 

I learned a lot with windows, but the biggest lesson was don`t buy one.

[nick_r]

To be clear, I am not making this switch because of a horrible experience with this Dell. It's been running for 4 years- I've put in a bigger hard drive, maxed the memory, and a blown power supply is the only thing that I've had to fix. However, I do wait for it as it cranks trying to save photoshop files, and I am running out of storage with its two HD slots, so I'm thinking about replacing it. In fact, for the last 9 years the only real problems I've had with any of my PCs has been blown power supplies. I've not had any real Windows horror stories, but Macs are supposedly easier and the thing for photography.

[john_macpherson]

Dave Hoffmann, Feb 06, 2008; 06:33 a.m.

 

"People have bought into the propaganda of the Mac. Stick with a PC. I can't remember my PC locking up once in the past 5 years."

 

 

Nick - do you really want to take advice from someone with such a major memory problem? :-)

[christopher hartt dallas]

We added 2 Mac Pros this past June (Still have our relatively new Dell PC's) for batch processing and editing. Typically, we process about 4500-6000 RAW images per week.

 

The MACs blow the PCs away running Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom. We've cut our batch processing time from the PC's running day and night for 5-6 days, to the MAC PRO doing the same batch in about 5-6 hours.

 

We still use PC's for a broad variety of miscellaneous, word processing, bookkeeping, email, etc. But for Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom it's not even a contest. The MAC wins hands down. For our shop, it's not an "either/or" decision, we will use both MAC and PC.

[fourthst]

Nikon or Canon? Let's see, which one takes better pictures? The fact is both computer

platforms are fine. I have used both and each has its quirks. I prefer the Mac and use one

now. If asked, I would recommend Mac but that is based on my working preference. Get a

Mac, give it a go, it is in fact a good computer. If you don't like it it will be obsolete in a

week or two anyway and you can justify getting a new PC.

[Brad_]

Get the new MacPro if you really need the expandability. Especially if you're going to venture into video

processing - where the 8 cores will come into use.

 

If you're just going to be working mid-sized stills at the non-professional level, the 2.8 GHz 24" iMac is

a great value. And photoshop will run roughly the same speed since it will not employ all the extra cores

of the MacPro (nor will LR, except for rendering).

 

Really though, it's about the robust OS - that's the main reason...

 

Christopher, gorgeous portfolio - people should check it out!

[ellis_vener_photography]

"It seems to me if I want to keep using my monitors, the cheapest thing I can buy is the stripper Mac Pro for $2300, with no options"

 

here's an option, get a 20" iMac (with 4Gb RAM -- but only get the bare minimum amount of RAM with your iMAc and buy the replacement RAM (2 x 2Gb) from a vendor like Kingston or Other World Computing) -- and attach your 24' Dell to the external display connection that is built in connection on the back to attach a second monitor to it. Recycle your crappy 17" LCD.

 

I have about 4 terrabytes of external HDDs connected to my iMac via Firewire and USB 2.0

 

 

This very recent blog entry from Phillip Greenspun also makes for fun reading if you are considering Vista and HP:

 

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/01/30/the-1000-hp-desktop-tower-running-windows-vista/

 

My one concern about switching for you would be using your existing HDDs which are formatted for Windows. Would that cause a problem? Perhaps one of the guys who has switched recently can answer that better than I can.

 

I nthe mean time here are are a couple of things that might help you with speeding things up no matter which system you go to:

 

1.) Have multiple scratch disks assigned to Photoshop, none of which are on your main drive (the one with your applications and OS installed.

 

2.) Don't store your images on your main HDD either.

 

3.) When speed is of the essence turn off all other programs especially internet, mail and IM programs -- this will maximize the amount of real RAM you have available for Photoshop to use.

[marc_bergman1]

Nick,

 

It would be helpful if you were more specific as to your needs.

 

What type of digital photography do you do? It makes a difference whether you are taking the output from a 12MP DSLR or are scanning medium format film.

 

How many images do you process in a week?

 

What photo editing programs do you use?

 

Are you into video?

 

I believe you can say Newegg on photonet. Let me give it a try.

[lex_jenkins]

Besides the problems Patrick mentioned another good reason to spend money on better components when having a PC custom made is to minimize the effects of radio frequency interference and electromagnetic interference.

 

You've probably noticed fat, tubular shaped cannisters attached to your monitor cables and A/V cables for some USB devices. These are ferrite "chokes" designed to reduce RFI/EMI. Well designed electronic components inside the computer will often have tiny donut shaped ferrite toroids that accomplish pretty much the same thing (impedance matching is another factor, but that's not really relevant here).

 

Cheap components omit these expensive ferrite chokes and blatantly ignore FCC regulations regarding RFI/EMI. Wanna know why so many Chinese made electronics are so much cheaper? Inadequate shielding is one reason.

 

RFI/EMI can interfere with data integrity essential to digital photo editing. That's why good USB cables are shielded, so your photos are transferred intact. Poorly designed components can interfere with monitor resolution. It isn't always obvious, but RFI/EMI can produce subtle discolorations onscreen, making it impossible to accurately calibrate your system. Minor distortions barely visible on the monitor can lead to eye strain and fatigue.

 

Besides noisy fans, poorly shielded components will emit a high pitched whine that will also contribute to user fatigue.

 

BTW, this isn't an anti-Chinese manufacturing rant. Some Chinese manufacturers build components to high standards. But don't reward the purveyors of junk by saving a few bucks. If they cut corners on RFI/EMI shielding, the entire device or component is probably crap anyway and a poor value at any price.

 

There's a good reason why quality electronic components cost more. It isn't just profiteering.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Photoshop is just a 32 bit program.. Whether one uses a Mac or PC; the max ram photoshop directly can use is about 3 gigs. With many photoshop features having a dual, quad or 8 cores doesnt help at all; it does with some filters and functions. With either platform one can choke ones system when files are super large. In ripping videos here the program I use only uses one core or cpu; thus having a dual or quad doesnt help.

[kelly_flanigan1]

The power supplies in my IBM servers that are 10 to 12 years old are all made in China. With one series of server hardware I have 13 boxes of all the same type; many are actually old pulls out of banks bought off of ebay. Of these 13 boxes TWO power supplies have died since 1996. Thats really not a bad MTBF for used stuff thats kept on 24/7. Supplies for servers for IBM usually are selected to be robust.

[sprouty]

I just bought an HP Pavillion for less than $600. Yes, I would have loved a Mac, but compare the specs and then the price for something equivalent. It's really quite difficult to justify the difference.

 

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/HP-Pavilion-A6230N-Desktop-PC-A6230N/sem/rpsm/oid/192789/catOid/-12962/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

[beauh44]

I have a Dell box that sits about 30 feet from my desk that's been up and running for about eight years now, non-stop. Like you, I had to replace the power supply once - but it was still under warranty when that happened.

 

I don't doubt that a Mac is a great PC. But I've also balked at the price difference. With a modest amount of tech knowledge, one can assemble a helluva PC for about half of the cost of a Mac.

 

Having said that, I'm thinking about biting the Mac bullet - not because of the hardware - but because of Windoze Vista. Now that Macs are using Intel processors it would sure be nice if I could just buy the Mac OS and put it on my own box.

 

I haven't tried this route and thus can't recommend it but if you don't mind wielding a screw-driver you might Google "Hackintosh" and see what happens. ;-)

[pmj]

I think a major advantage of a Mac is simplicity in both hardware and software. I like the

lack of stickers, lights, buttons, multiple colours, pop-up messages, product activation,

drive letters for empty drives and the general clutter I see on Windows machines.

 

If you look at specs alone, Apple isn't going to win. If you look at the design of things and

the way stuff works (also applies to software like iLife and features like Spotlight or Cover

Flow), Apple could be the better choice for someone.

 

Apple does not always offer much choice and you might not care for a built-in webcam

and would prefer a built-in 9-in-1 card reader.

[sprouty]

<I>"I think a major advantage of a Mac is simplicity in both hardware and software."</I>

<P>

Hard to argue otherwise, but I would have been divorced...

[Brad_]

Why is it I've yet to see a "Switching to PC" thread on photonet?

[kelly_flanigan1]

With Photoshop I switched to a PC with version 2.5; the fast eddie. All my floppies got turned in and surrendered to Adobe.

[Brad_]

Ellis:

 

Question, as I'm also looking towards an Intel-based Mac (24" iMac) coming from a Dual G5

powerpc Mac. When running photoshop and lightroom simultaneously, have you ever felt

limited on the 4 gb (3.3 gb with 4 gb installed on older iMacs) max RAM - and while running

a handful of other apps? For my modest needs a MacPro makes little sense, especially as

photoshop performance is more or less a wash. Thanks...

[lex_jenkins]

I switched to PCs about 10 years ago only because a relative gave me a Pentium I and a copy of Corel Photo Paint. At the time I was using Macs (and had just snagged a used IIfx, longtime object of lust) and various editing programs.

 

I'd have gone back to Macs a long time ago but I keep inheriting hand-me-down PCs, and it's what we already used at work.

 

Personally, I'm sick and tired of the constant tweaking Windows PCs need to remain operational, and being the "family expert" whenever someone's PC crashes. If I went back to Macs I could just plead ignernce. I'd keep the PC for the web, tho', 'cause it's already infested with critters.

[EricM]

these threads always bring a smile to my face! It's like Honda and Harley people arguing. Mac's are PC's now. Every Mac user has reason to thank PC? If it wasn't for the gaming industry running PC's, we wouldn't have these fabulous machines anyways.

 

"Why is it I've yet to see a "Switching to PC" thread on photonet?"

 

haha, that's a good one my old friend Brad. You're knowledgeable, what was Mac's market share amongst the graphics industry in the mid 90's? 80% or so? What was it by 2005? 3%? Hmmm...

 

The Hackintosh thing is neat. Wow, $800 in PC parts running leopard, and it almost beats a mac pro? Imagine what $1200 in parts would do!

 

I'll never switch back to Mac. Too much money for the performance. I like having the PC parts options and upgrading my gear cheaply. It does suck having two boxes running though, one for the net and one for work.