Considering a Mac: question

Carl Miller · 02-05-2007, 07:23 PM

After being really close to buying a new Gateway PC, I'm thinking of getting a 20" iMac (Mac Pro is a bit out of my price range) and from what I've read the time may be right to switch from the PC.

I use Adobe Photoshop CS and the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite daily on my XP based PC, and my one concern is that I've read there are speed issues running Photoshop on an intel based Mac? The article I read, which is on CNet, talks about non native applications that haven't been ported to intel based Macs and that using these programs, such as Photoshop, is much slower.

Any thoughs on this, and additional thoughts on the iMac to throw in?

Michael_K_Sr · 02-05-2007, 07:52 PM

Carl, it is true that the Creative Suite hasn't been ported yet. However, the Universal (Intel-native) version is due out this spring. Adobe for the first time released a free Photoshop beta (a caveat...you have to have a serial number for the previous version of Photoshop in order to download it) for the Mac so users could see the performance gains they can expect when the full release is ready. Until then, you have a couple of options...you could run the Mac CS2 version now through the Rosetta emulation. It's definitely a slowpoke, but some of that slowness can be minimized by increasing RAM. You could also run your Windows version of the Creative Suite by running either Apple's Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop for Mac. Check Ron's post for his experience with Parallels.

I'm a big fan of the iMacs...I think they are great value and unless you need the highest end graphics card for gaming, it should be plenty powerful enough for you.

Andrew Pratt · 02-05-2007, 07:56 PM

Agreed. Get the iMac and run your current copy of photoshop until the intel version is released.

Michael_K_Sr · 02-05-2007, 08:08 PM

Here's a link to Macworld's benchmarks on Photoshop CS2 and the CS3 beta.

Carl Miller · 02-05-2007, 10:16 PM

Thanks guys. I'm going to check out the boot camp and parallels info. The benchmark test article was a good read. I'm really indecisive about making the move to the Mac. I could probably live with running CS on it...I mean, it's not exactly running speedy on my current computer. I hate to shell out for the upgrade to CS3 though.

On the other hand, I'm not a gamer and I honestly don't feel like I want any part of Vista. Is 2 Gig RAM and a 250 Gig HD enough for the foreseeable future?

**HTF Ads**

Andrew Pratt · 02-05-2007, 10:20 PM

I know how you feel. I'm a LONG time windows user that just made the switch and I'm glad I did. I've been sitting on the fence for over a year now and finally got the courage up and sold off my laptop and bought the MacBook Pro. I won't lie and say it hasn't been without its ups and downs as I've adjusted to OSX but over all its been a lot easier then I thought and now that I'm fairly comfortable there's no going back.

Michael_K_Sr · 02-05-2007, 10:55 PM

Carl, I think 2GB and a 250GB hard drive is fine. I have 2GB of RAM on my MacBook Pro and it runs both Tiger and XP through Parallels great. One thing to keep in mind with the iMac...it only has two RAM slots. If you do decide in the future that you want 3GB, you'll have to remove one of the 1GB SO-DIMMS and replace it with a 2GB module.

Thomas Newton · 02-06-2007, 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl Miller

On the other hand, I'm not a gamer and I honestly don't feel like I want any part of Vista. Is 2 Gig RAM and a 250 Gig HD enough for the foreseeable future?

For normal applications, 2 GB is a lot more than enough. Given that you will be running PhotoShop (possibly under Rosetta, at that), I'd say that 2 GB is not overdoing it.

You might want to consider a larger hard drive. Digital music, digital photos, and digital video (MiniDV == 15 GB per hour) eat HD space as if it was going out of style.

If you install Windows XP (or 2000) on your Mac and run it via Parallels, that would also be another big disk space user.

MarkHastings · 02-06-2007, 10:14 AM

Plus, most applications won't use more than 2GB of memory.

Carl Miller · 02-06-2007, 09:23 PM

Thanks again. I'm going to check out what cost it would be to go for the larger hard drive to the iMac. 2 gigs of RAM sounds like it would be enough for now. At least it can be expanded a bit if needed though I didn't know about having to replace a 1 gig module with a 2 gig...Not ideal, but I can live with it. I have a feeling all this is going to take me close to the 2k mark in cost....I really wish the Mac Pro came with a monitor.

Andrew, if you don't mind another question or two...Did you run into any unexpected situations where you wanted to do something with the Mac that you used to do with Windows, but couldn't? What do you use for Word Processing/Spreadsheet/general office type software, if anything?