Digital BW, The Print

Here's my son's advice:
"It seems like he is the ideal candidate for a Mac Pro, with the external monitors and desire to set them up in tandem.  The base model is currently priced at $2499, so it's a bit higher than what he wanted to pay, but it's a quad-core 2.66 GHz Xeon with 3 GB or memory (expandable to 32 GB), a 640 GB hard drive and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512 MB VRAM.  It's got four hard drive bays, so he's good to go for expansion there, and it can accommodate multiple graphics cards as well.  As it is, the built in video card should amply handle the two monitors he wants to use.
If that's a little more than he'd like to spend, which I can certainly understand, there are plenty of older models (all of which should meet his requirements) linked for sale here.  My advice would be to purchase one that can be registered with Apple Care, since the components are expensive.
Also, if he is willing to consider an iMac, there are currently two 24" models that would fit his needs nicely - the 2.66 and 2.93 GHz models at $	1499 and $1799 respectively.  He would be able to run an external monitor with a Mini Display Port to DVI adapter, and he would have the built-in 24" display as well.  While the iMac isn't as expandable internally, it can be used with external hard drives for scratch disks, and it supports up to 8 GB of memory, which is customer-installable.  I know a number of graphics professionals who use them as their main workstations."
Mike Brubaker
--- On Mon, 6/8/09, Allan Sutherland <allan@...> wrote:

From: Allan Sutherland <allan@...>
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re:New Computer Advice
To: "Digital Black&White" <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Monday, June 8, 2009, 9:53 PM











 






    
            
            


      
      On 09/06/2009 00:04, "Tom Fielder" <tfielder@fieldergro up.com> wrote:



> but if you want to retain the PC software that eliminates the Mac.



Actually, that is no longer true with the intel dual processor machines.

These can operate windows software as well as Mac software, thus the best of

both worlds is available. The machine has bootcamp software installed which

allows starting up windows OS/windows software. There are more sophisticated

versions of this on Open Source Mac software. So, if macs offer better

graphics performance and this is a computer to work with photographs, then

there is less reason not to choose a mac for that purpose. (Also, macs have

less of an issue with viruses and other attacks, less not 100% less, but

less.)



Toodle-pip,



Allan.




 

      

    
    
	
	 
	
	


	


	
	
	
	
	




      

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