Digital BW, The Print

Lou,
Especially if you don't have to purchase a new monitor, I don't think a Mac is out of your price range of $2,000 or less.  My son got into the Macs about 5 years ago and eventually converted me to a used Power Mac G4 for our "everyday" computer.  My wife was tired of/frustrated with my frequently having to run cleanup software to make the Windows XP PC run acceptably.  I haven't had to do that on the Mac.  Recently I upgraded the first one (733 mhz single PPC) for a dual 1.25 PPC G4 with 2 meg of RAM.  Even on the 733 G4 I was able to run PS CS2 to my satisfaction.  Now, I don't consider myself a power PS user and rarely have more than one image open at a time and rarely have more than one program running at a time, so others' mileages may vary.
Now my son is a Genius (Tech Support staff) at Apple!  Just for fun I'll forward your email to him for a ballpark technology/price recommendation on a Mac.  I would think a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 2-3 gig of RAM would meet your needs. 
I still use my XP PC for programs that don't run on the Mac like the SSCC printer utility among others.  I rarely have it connect to the internet, and that seems to have helped it be a bit more stable.  And with my wife used to using the Mac I don't get the complaints about the computer not working.
Mike Brubaker   
--- On Mon, 6/8/09, Louis Dina <lou@...> wrote:

From: Louis Dina <lou@...>
Subject: [Digital BW] New Computer Advice
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, June 8, 2009, 8:51 AM











 






    
            
            


      
      I need some advice. My 6 year old computer (WinXP) just crashed and I need a new one.  It was getting slow anyway. I'd consider a Mac, but all my software is PC and I have never even used a Mac (they also seem very expensive). I have a limited budget (like to keep it under $2000 if possible. I have monitors and external USB hard drives for backup). I don't need a "state of the art screamer" but I do need a faster, more powerful machine to comfortably process 21 MB RAW 5DmkII files and one that works well with my Canon 6100 printer. I figure 200-300 MB files will be a routine thing in Photoshop (currenty using PSCS2 and LR2.3) Color management MUST work properly.



I've never used Vista and am a bit gun shy. I have heard there are problems with its ability to retain monitor calibration data, etc, and that color management may be an issue. I have also read about problems getting the Canon drivers and plugins working. A new machine will have some flavor of Vista, but which one? And is XP compatibility mode part of the standard Vista system? Does Vista require any new software or can I use my old Windows XP software?



Suggestions on computer make, deals, CPU, amount and type of RAM, hard drive size and type, video card, etc, would be appreciated. I'd like the video card to have two connections and two video lookup tables for my two Samsung monitors. Any other advice would be appreciated. I'm way out of touch on what to buy and don't want to make a big mistake.



Thank You,



Lou Dina



p.s. I have posted this email to a few other forums.  Thanks for understanding.




 

      

    
    
	
	 
	
	


	


	
	
	
	
	




      

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