shiny, new Mac

Joe--

You might find this thread interesting:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=74915

Bottom line--probably best to get the older dual 1.8 or even dual 2.0.

Best,

Bob

Thanks, Bob.

Do you know if the older dual 1.8s are still available?

Joe

Joe you will find that John Lewis have the old ones, plus you get two years warrantee with them (you don't with apple)

However this does not apply to their online store. Make sure you don't get a really old one though otherwise it won't have 10.3 and ilife (you will want to play in garageband it is awesome)

Regarding the graphics performance my understanding with photoshop is that it is mostly being handled by the main processors. I am having a blast in unreal tournament with the specced card for the new range and its perfect.

Its also worth pointing out that IL&M use standard config G4s with 2 gigs of ram and after effects for a lot of their film stuff, so I would imagine the latest G5s will be excellent for home/business use.

One other thing if they offer up the MSOffice package as a good price (£150 when we bought our G4) get it. Its the only gateway to the PC world you will ever need, and its excellent on the mac.

I have 1.2 gigs of ram which is enough to run 12 plus applications will little swapping, be aware that the G5 Architecture requires that you buy ram in pairs, (Didn't it used to be similar years ago?) I always use crucial who have it all sorted out for you.

If you have never used OSX, I am confident you will love it. I have not had a system wide crash since March 2001 (Yes I am counting)

Just another thought, goto apple.com/ukstore

Chances are hidden in a corner of the main page will be the older G5s.

Joe--

Apple shows dual 1.8 and dual 2 GHz refurbs here:
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/70806/wo/wC7RoW1K0PoS2ptgpls18QwdyOM/0.0.7.1.0.5.13.0.5.0.0.0.0.3.1.1.0?90,63

The dual 2.0 GHz one looks like quite the deal!

Interestingly, Apple does not yet show the older machines available as new, although if you trawl though Macrumors it appears that many of the "refurbs" are in fact new. You could just call Apple and find out.

Various resellers also show them in stock, like Macmall and Clubmac.

I've got one of the 1.5 GHz Powerbooks and it is awesome!

Best,

Bob

Sorry Jo, just realised you are stateside.

Either way you need a wacom tablet, I got one when I was over there and I havn't picked up my mouse since.

Hey, Bob.

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You could just call Apple and find out.

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Just did. The guy said they sold *all* old G5s. The old 1.6 went the first day and the remaining old 1.8s and 2s went today.


Hey, Gary.

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Sorry Jo, just realised you are stateside.

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Yeah, I was wondering why you were advising me to buy overseas. Prices are lower here for just about everything except Naim kit. Plus I get an education discount, so buying abroad would have been a lot more money. And then there's the voltage issue...

Joe

All macs come with multi function voltage thingamy bob, so that would not have been a problem.

But yes when I was in San Francisco I had cause to visit the apple store (a few times) And purchased many things because it is rudely cheap.

I only pray that when the music store hits these shores (apparently soon) they won't be charging £1 a song. I bet they do though.

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Would an ATI Radeon 9600XT or 9800XT be a smart upgrade?

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All else being equal, I find the ATI's colour seem brighter, more vibrant and text seems sharper than the equivalent Nvidia offerings; ATI's cooling fans are quieter as well. I've had over a dozen cards in my own computers over the years.

If you're not gaming, you certainly won't need a 9800XT (there are no ST:TOS games out, nor are any planned ). A 9600XT is almost pushing it, but at least they're priced on the right side of the curve. Is the 9600SE available for mac?

Edit: I see the 9600 pro is available for Mac. Killer 2d, 128megs, DVI and passive cooling to boot.

Hey, Mike.

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All else being equal, I find the ATI's colour seem brighter, more vibrant and text seems sharper than the equivalent Nvidia offerings

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Thanks. I'll look into the ATIs, then.

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If you're not gaming, you certainly won't need a 9800XT (there are no ST:TOS games out, nor are any planned

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I've not played a video game since 1991 -- I believe the last game I played was called Tetris or something like that. Horribly addictive game that almost prevented me from graduating. Did wonders for sleep deprivation, too.

Joe

Joe,

I would say the new entry level G5 is a sweet maching for the price. I'm not an expert on video cards, but I thought the main reason for a fancy card is to offload rendering of surfaces etc. to the card from the CPU. Drawing all those small triangles in real time in Quake can be cpu intensive. If all you are doing is looking at photos, applying filters, etc. the fancy card won't speed that up. Then again, I could be talking nonsense. What is worrying is the lack of PCI-X -- this might hit you on the transfer of large images. I suppose stetching to a dual 2GHz is out of the question? It's only $500 and you get a bigger disk and more RAM (something you'd need anyway).

Also, are you factoring in the full cost of Photoshop? (not cheap) Even though my slide scanner can do 16 bit depth, Elements is 8bit only. Then again, perhaps you already have the full version.

Dan

Hey, Dan.

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I suppose stetching to a dual 2GHz is out of the question?

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Yeah. Even the dual 1.8 is stretching it and will clean me out at a time when, if I had any sense, I'd be putting money away. (Not that long ago I thought that a 20-inch iMac would be extravagant, considering that work is up in the air and I'm about to be a father.)

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Also, are you factoring in the full cost of Photoshop?

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I'm eligible for academic pricing not just for the computer, but also for software, so prices are more than reasonable. A full, legitimate copy of Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac is only $5! Not a typo -- five, measly clams, thanks to a deal the university struck with Billy-Bob Gates. And I can get the entire Adobe Creative Suite -- Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro and InDesign -- for $360. Photoshop CS alone is $260. I do look smashing with an eye-patch and peg leg, but, all things considered, I'd rather not be a pirate so I'm buying legit copies of what I need.

Arrrrrrrrrrr.

Joe

Joe--

I'd go for it, then. I've seen the dual 1.8s amd they scream--and will certainly be able to handle anything you've mentioned doing...

Enjoy!

Bob

$5
Finally Microsoft are charging appropriate prices for their software
While I also get an educational price on hardware, Photoshop for home use would run over $600. Grab the creative suite at that price. Are we to expect some new, high-powered, postings in the Naim Photo Album?

Dan

Dan OfficeX in OSX is excellent and well worth the reduced price I paid for it, I think it is pricey at £400 but I paid £150 as part of a deal on a new mac.

At the end of the day (Britains most hated cliché) It is the industry software and you need to have it.

I got a similar deal when I bought my iBook - Office for OS X for £150.

There's a new Mac version of Office now - Office 2004. I wonder how much of an improvement it is.

JonR

igary,

Yep, I have it, but it's always fun to take a poke at Bill and his paperclip.

Dan

I downloaded the trial version of it.

There is much improvement in font handling and display in the menus (Very very much required)

Other than that all you get is a menu that goes translusent when not used (Utterly pointless and distracting) A record to memo thing and other small fry.

The main point of this upgrade was to bring entourage into line with Outlook so now you can fully diarise and link with others via projects so in the business world an excellent upgrade.

For the rest of us I think to pricey upgrade prices for too little return, especially as there is still no front page.

I discovered recently from our IT dept that if you are undertaking the European Computer Driving License (ECDL) then you are considered a student for the purposes of buying MS office at educational discount.

I previously bought an educational license copy and had to get forms signed by my tutor to send off to micrsoft before I received the software CDROMs. The last time I bought an educational copy, the full version of office was in the box on CDROM with no check ups required.

Kevin

MS are very lax on their educational discounts and you can almost always get one if you wwant (anyone with a child in full time education can get one for example). They know no private indivduals are going to pay £500+ for Office software and it's better to sell you an an "Educational" copy of Office for £90 than for you to just rip of a copy from work.

Matthew

Jo, the old dual 1.8s are fantastic machines if you can get one at a price you are prepared to pay. If they come with the original OS, make sure you know someone with a broadband connection. After plugging in, booting, watching the automatic OS install and rebooting, the machine (if connected via Ethernet to a router) will announce that it has detected a usable internet connection and will proceed to update itself to the latest version of everything which is part of the default install. Only after this has happened should you install any 3rd party RAM, etc. (you will want at least 768MB and probably more, judging by your posts above).

People with Macs tend to be happier when they compromise on ultimate power, rather than total RAM, or monitor quality. A lower-powered machine with loads of RAM and a decent monitor will satisfy, and possibly be quicker overall than a RAM-starved flyer into a crap Hitachi CRT. If you are a touch typist, consider a Matias keyboard as they are truly glorious.

Be aware that if you install M$ Office, you are to some extent duplicating stuff which is already there. Simple Word files (not just RTF) can be read and written with the MacOS's built in text editor TextEdit, and the Entourage component (email & PIM) of Office is there purely to enable access to an MS Exchange server account. Apple's built-in Mail app is just a front-end GUI to the email engine which is part of the OS, and is therefore quick and elegant. Installing Entourage basically duplicates all the required stuff, and it won't talk to and use the system-wide Address Book and iCal (diary) which again, is included. Apple's Mail will also talk to an Exchange server account, but only email -- nothing else. PDFs are also creatable and readable natively (everything you see on the screen is effectively a PDF) so Acrobat Reader is not only (in most cases) unnecessary, but relatively slow compared with Preview (included). Every print dialog has a "Print Preview" button built in, which creates a PDF on the fly, using the settings from the currently-selected printer. Predictably, Office doesn't usually play nicely with this as it offers its own Print Preview, and it is obviously thought to be more desirable to load the user with proprietary code by reinventing the wheel rather than hook into what the OS already provides. Pah!

The Mac just works -- as it should do, considering that Apple build the OS to run on a relatively limited range of hardware. The integration between hardware and OS is therefore extremely tight, which leads to a general lack of hassle and the ability for the user to concentrate on the reasons he/she bought the computer, rather than the computer itself. You pay for this of course, but you totally fail to get bored with it! Most new clients of mine initially apologise that they're not very "computer literate", and will often later remark on how "human-literate" the computer is. If you just want to get the job done, that's powerful.

Best;

Mark

Have you decided what ype of screen you will be using.

I was in the Apple shop in Chicago last week and looked at some of my web based pictures on the Apple non CRT screens and I thought that the images were a bit fuzzy and weak compared to what I see on the monitor at home.

A suitable Apple set up for image work was quoted at about 2900 USD

Derek

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Thanks for the comprehensive reply, Mark.

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...the old dual 1.8s are fantastic machines if you can get one at a price you are prepared to pay.

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A few people have suggested exactly that, and I'd be happy with any of last year's crop, but according to Apple all of the old machines have been sold.

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...you will want at least 768MB and probably more, judging by your posts above

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The plan is to get 1 GB, mostly to have more RAM than Vuk has. ;-)

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People with Macs tend to be happier when they compromise on ultimate power, rather than total RAM, or monitor quality.

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If I can stretch it, I'll get a 20-inch Cinema Display. I like lots of screen real estate for tool bars and palettes when I'm Photoshopping and the 20-incher is as huge -- 1680x1050 -- as it is impressive.

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Be aware that if you install M$ Office, you are to some extent duplicating stuff which is already there.

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If I were paying street price for Office it would be a concern. But at $5 for the whole suite I can't see any downside.

____________________________________________


Derek,

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Have you decided what ype of screen you will be using.

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The 20-inch Cinema Display if I can swing it. (I'm delaying the big computer purchase only because I'm waiting on job news. My current job ends September 30, but another position appears to be opening up.)

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I was in the Apple shop in Chicago last week and looked at some of my web based pictures on the Apple non CRT screens and I thought that the images were a bit fuzzy and weak compared to what I see on the monitor at home.

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Now that is odd. I don't know which of the current displays you saw -- 17-, 20- or 23-inch LCD -- but I've never heard anything but praise for them. Admittedly, they are expensive, but the colour, tonal range, sharpness, brightness and contrast of the Cinema Displays are all very good from what I can tell. Even diehard PC-using, Apple-hating Vuk has a Cinema Display and you know how anal he is.

Here's an old review of a discontinued Apple LCD monitor. It's pretty much a glowing assessment all around and since the new ones are unlikely to be worse, I'm surprised you didn't get on with Apple's monitors.

Joe

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Derek,


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Have you decided what ype of screen you will be using.
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The 20-inch Cinema Display if I can swing it. (I'm delaying the big computer purchase only because I'm waiting on job news. My current job ends September 30, but another position appears to be opening up.)



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I was in the Apple shop in Chicago last week and looked at some of my web based pictures on the Apple non CRT screens and I thought that the images were a bit fuzzy and weak compared to what I see on the monitor at home.
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Now that is odd. I don't know which of the current displays you saw -- 17-, 20- or 23-inch LCD -- but I've never heard anything but praise for them. Admittedly, they are expensive, but the colour, tonal range, sharpness, brightness and contrast of the Cinema Displays are all very good from what I can tell. Even diehard PC-using, Apple-hating Vuk has a Cinema Display and you know how anal he is.

Here's an old review of a discontinued Apple LCD monitor. It's pretty much a glowing assessment all around and since the new ones are unlikely to be worse, I'm surprised you didn't get on with Apple's monitors.

Joe

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Derek is seeing for himself what the problems are with LCD and not reading what is basically amaturish trash written by people who have no idea what they are talking about. Derek also has a decent CRT monitor with pretty small aperture grille pitch so he can see how a good CRT can perform, although IIRC his is on the way out.

If you read the useless reviews, they do seem preoccupied with radiation. Enough said.

Sorry to sound arrogant, but I do find myself repeating the same comments on this forum about the limitations of LCD monitors with image manipulation. Sharp and punchy they are at first glance, but they're crap.

Count,

It was the Vuk bit that set you off, wasn't it?

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Derek also has a decent CRT monitor with pretty small aperture grille pitch so he can see how a good CRT can perform

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I use one of these at work, so it's not like I have no idea what a good CRT is capable of. In fact, the FP1375x is probably one of the best CRTs this side of $1000.

I am genuinely interested in your opinion as a professional photographer, but I don't recall you ever offering anything more constructive than just dismissing LCD out of hand as crap. What, exactly, do you not like about LCD monitors and in what way are good CRTs superior?

Joe

I have learnt that reading/writing on forums is fun, but as soon as someone's opinion is questioned it only ends up in a pointless argument. I also find it very hard to write my opinion on photographic matters without sounding totally arrogant. So, I just post quick short facts (which end up sounding arrogant anyway). I learn from others, in different subjects, by asking the right person and not asking why.

The difference between CRT and LCD is so big that I wouldn't know where to begin. I'm at photographic exhibitions often, looking at the latest pro-stuff and always try to get it flogged to me by the usual salesmen who know me by now. When a decent space saving screen comes along, don't worry I'll be the first to buy it.

The reviews of monitors are probably written by the same type of people who do photoshop retouching on their screen placed near a window.

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It was the Vuk bit that set you off, wasn't it?

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I had to go back to your post to see what you were refering to and I still don't know. Sorry, it must be some sort of jibe to start an argument.