Choosing a Mac?
pechos (120 pencils) | Tue, 2006-09-19 15:58I'm a PC Guy.
I have always been a PC guy, and only know PC's.
I have recently been giving some serious consideration to crossing over to the dark side, and purchasing a mac. My dilemma however is, that I am not horribly knowledgeable when it comes to Hardware, and even more specifically Mac hardware.
After visiting the mac store and reading the write up about the new iMac posted my Mackie, I have been leaning towards the 24" 2.16GHz iMac. I am hoping to get some opinions on requirements based off users experiences in the past and present over here at CB. I primarily do web design. Which leaves me on any given day with Dreamwear, Photoshop, often Illi, and Flash open on the desktop, in addition to chat clients, email, mp3 players, etc.
The big question I have here is to see if people think this iMac will be enough to keep me sailing smoothly through an average day. One of my biggest grieances with my current setup is that when I open up photoshop and have more than 10 photos opened from my camera, it gets super bogged down.
Anyhow, just looking for some random opinions and insights here from people who maybe have similar workflows to mine. How far are you able to push the envelope with your mac before you start slowing down? Any opinions on whether taking the leap from 2.16Ghz to 2.33 is worth the price?
Commenting on this Forum topic is closed.
The new 24" are pretty well specced out, it's the best you're going to do without getting a Mac Pro.
From the sound of things you'll want to give it the maximum amount of RAM (2 GB I think), or else you'll end up being bogged down by the VM. The apps you mentioned (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash) aren't Universal Binaries yet which means they'll be running in Rosetta, which apparently is a RAM hog. And those apps are RAM hogs on their own too. So definitely get a lot of RAM.
The leap from 2.16 to 2.33 depends on the price difference. Probably not a noticeable performance different unless you're counting the seconds. You might very well be able to upgrade it later anyway though.
You could consider getting the 7600 graphics card since it's a bit nicer than the default 7300, however the types of tasks you mentioned probably won't benefit hugely from the graphics card (unless you're using Aperture or something!).
I would go for a iMac 20" (minimum) and if you can spare a couple of bucks extra, then I would go for a iMac 24". I curently own a PowerBook G4 with a 20" external monitor...I really love the working space you get out of a 16:9 20" screen. This is why I would recommend a minimum of 20".
As for the graphic card, get the best you can right away. What's 90$ out of 2250$ to get the best card. At least you will have peace of mind knowing you can run any software (like Aperture) if need be.
RAM: is the most crucial thing for a Mac, as Apfhex mentioned Rosetta is apparently is a RAM hog and so is all graphic design software. So max it out right away!
If I would need to choose between the best video card vs. maxing out the RAM,(because of the budget$$) I would put 90$ toward RAM before the video
card.
Hope this helps!
Ghyslain