After my latest rounds of editing, I've concluded that my desktop is way past it's prime. It's a 4 year old athlon 3200 with 1gb ram. I got a laptop recently, but it has vista and that os has issues with calibration (it loses the profile whenever it goes to sleep or anything). So I want a new dedicated editing station.

warning: mac people, keep your traps shut, I'm not in a position to get a mac, nor do i really want one.

anyway, if I'm transferring xp pro, should i just save some cash and get a core2duo system rather than spend extra money on a quad core. I haven't researched it much, but I imagine that nothing I use for photo editing will be able to take advantage of quad core technology anyway.

another thing i'm wondering about is self-build vs prebuilt. i priced out a dell with top of the line core2duo 4gb ram and such for 709. If I could build one less expensively (and recycle stuff like my optical drives and my crt monitor) that would be even better.

Any thoughts/advice?

If you are looking at dell, keep an eye on http://slickdeals.net

Here is one I just found

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/13142

I wouldn't bother with recycling optical drives. A DVD burner is in the 20-30 range. If you are happy with your current monitor, by all means keep it and don't buy a new one.

Are you a member at costco? If so check out what they have.

http://tinyurl.com/5q8dhd

yeah, costco has this core2duo system that looks promising

i'd love to have a flat panel monitor, but at this point to save some $$$ i'll keep the crt until I'm in a position to justify a high quality flat panel

You should also check under Dell's Small business section. You can get a great deal on a Vostro (dell's new office line) desktop that has no preloaded software and Windows XP Pro. That's what they've been getting at the office I work at and they work really well (and no aftermarket software to mess with!!).

ohh btw, the last one they got came with a free upgrade to a 22 inch flat panel. pretty sweet.

Just FYI, my husband (*cough apple solutions consultant cough*) would like you to know that XP Pro can only read up to 3 GB of memory. That's one way to save your money

actually, there's a fix you can do to xp to take advantage of 4gb. booyah lol

Supposedly Dell Small Business will give you a discount if you are a NAPP member. I say supposedly because I picked out my system (I decided I wanted an XPS even if I'm not fully ready for the quad core), called them (yes, you have to call) and the salesman tried to talk me out of that and into their standard business system (can't remember the name of the line) because I didn't NEED a quad core system and he'd save me a bunch of cash. So he configured something with 1GB RAM, an 80GB hard drive, no sound card, a skimpier video card, and by the time we'd added back in things like the sound card, it cost more than the XPS.

Oh yeah, and with this "great deal" he couldn't offer me any more money off.

So I bought the XPS and I have to say I love it. I had just bought a second internal drive and I wanted to drop that into the new case. The XPS is really a gamer's machine, I believe, and it's set up for people who like to swap parts out on a semi regular basis. The case is nice and roomy and it's easy to access everything. There's room for another hard drive after my current second one; I installed a Lightscribe drive; it has a built in card reader (which is really zippy). It's the most I've ever spent on a machine (I usually bargain shop like crazy and LOVE SlickDeals) but I am happy with it.

With as much work as goes into building your own system (I haven't but my brother has and it was a ton of research), I think I'd go for a prebuilt that's mostly what you want and add in what's missing yourself if you are comfortable doing it. Your time is expensive, too!

hmmmm...I've got four gigs in my machine and it runs XP pro and recognizes it just fine.

Just keep an eye on the 3 major factors for speed. CPU, Ram, and video card all of which you can get in a decent pre-made machine from Dell or HP. If you're extremely comfortable building your own then go for it, I've built many a PC before I went all Mac.

If you're unsure then go with a pre-made and here's why: since it's your business machine you can't afford down time so the big guys like Dell offer next day warranty for up to 3 years.

LOL

quiet you

Phil, I got a PC that I will sell you for pretty cheap. If you don't want it, I might install XP and use it every once in a while...editing on a laptop is a little annoying...ya know!

XPS410
Dual 2.66 Core2Duo
4GB RAM
250GB 7200RPM HD
nVidia 7900GS GPU
Vista (yuck) but that can be changed

I only used it for a short time and went back to Mac. I would say $500 plus shipping. Let me know.

You know, *ahem* off the record... I'd say Michael is a pretty smart guy

But for the record Phil, I didn't say that.

We buy our pc's from Cyber Power. My husband did a lot of research on the best machine for Photoshop user's...we found the components we wanted for max. speed, etc and did a price comparison between Mac, Dell and CyberPower. The break down was:
Mac $4500 (no monitor)
Dell $3500 (no monitor)
Cyber $2500 w/ big ol flatscreen monitor

Virtually same cpu, ram, etc (cyber's was even a bit better in some areas). Anyway, if you want spec's, I can give them to you. BTW, this is the 3rd computer we've gotten from cyberpower (desktops only) and have been totally happy!

So, yeah...what's not to afford with a Mac, btw? I just switched in October after 22 years as a PC guy. Just go Mac, dude. Just....go...don't resist any more. Just breath and walk this way....breathe....and walk....muahahahaaaaa...

oh you mac people lol

i think cyberpower will be the way to go, through costco since they have a good warranty program and good specs

Oh no...jeez....don't do that to yourself. At least go Dell.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how this is possible. Cyber may be a great place to buy a PC, but there is no way in the world that the Cyber model built for $2,500 is anywhere close to a Mac Pro at $4,500. There is just no way.

for less than 4500, i built a mac pro with 2 3.0 Quad-Core Xeon processors, 4GB of ram, a 500GB hard drive and a 750GB hard drive. All other specs the default.

You are not getting an 8 core 3.0 Xeon system from cyberpower for 2500 with a monitor.

That above price also includes apple supplied ram, which is much cheaper elsewhere.

I hate to argue about this, but it's statements like this that make people think that Macs are so much more expensive than PC's. I would put an iMac against that cyberpower system and I'll bet the iMac comes out ahead. And a maxed out iMac is 2500, Cheaper if you upgrade the ram yourself, and you can get an amazing iMac for under 2000.

why's that? i thought costco gave good support in terms of warranty. they offer two year warranties on tv's and computers. otherwise, i'd probably go through dell

What? No!!! Whyyyyyyyy?

You CAN afford a mac. seriously--- PC with all those pop ups, and all the questions, and the counter intuitiveness- the pain costs more than a mac.

You don't need all that power/ ram/whatever anyway!! Get an imac with a couple of external drives. then end.

I'd go with Cyberpower too.
I had a friend use them to build his desktop and it is awesome.

I've compared 'apples to apples' (ie. MacPro vs. Cyberpower) and the only reasons I'd go with a MacPro over a custom PC from CyberPower is if I had:

a) a big fat wallet
b) I prefer OSX to anything that Microsoft has
c) Just to be 'cool'

However, I do all my work on an outdated eMachines with 3gb of ram, AMD 3200 (64bit) processor. Tons of HDD storage (over 1 TB total).

I have an older iMac (the half ball type with the monitor on a stick) and it has become my iTunes stereo and my wifes email appliance... it was never that good for production and I had maxed out the ram on that model.

Granted the new iMacs are much more capable and I even contemplated them as an option for when I finally upgrade. But again, cost is a factor and Macs do cost more up front.

All in all, they are computers and both have their strenghts and their weaknesses.

Owning a mac will not make you work any better imo.

Phil, go with Cyberpower. I think you will be pleased.
Plus, you know a lot about computers anyway and know exactly what you need.

I am curious as I have 4gigs of RAM and I use Win XP PRO but it only recognizes 3gigs. Unless you use XP PRO 64 bit, may I know what this "fix" is?

joel
pc/mac owner

right on johnny. i've never experienced issues that many have had with pc's. i've used them for 13 years. windows works for me; i own an ibook as well (my wife's really) and it just doesn't seem that much better to me than windows. i want something that works, and windows works for me, regardless of what all the mac fanpeople state. i have a hardware firewall, and my computer has always been virus/spyware free. plus, the money i save vs a mac can go toward paying a few months of student loans/a few months of car payments/a mortgage payment.http://www.prophotowiki.com/w/index.php/3GB_Switch

Actually, I hadn't done any real research on Cyberpower at all. After looking around, they are pretty competent machines for a budget. I would make sure to put your money into a really good monitor though. Don't skimp on that.

That said, I know you are Mac resistant, much as I was after 22 years of Windows. I just switched. I don't remember why I wouldn't before. I'd be curious to hear why you aren't interested in making the switch when you have an opportunity here. I will tell you why I will never go back to PC...I know you are unlikely to change your mind, but I thought I would just throw it out there.

I just got a new MacPro Desktop AND my Apple Care just covered an almost three-year old g4 laptop that Liana Lehmann sold me last October...I had one month left on my warranty and they couldn't fix a screen problem. They just sent me a brand spanking new 17" Macbook Pro, let me pay for upgrades to RAM and the Hard Drive AND it has a new one year warranty for it and I can buy the 2 year Apple Care extention any time in the next year.

As for the Mac OS:
-STABLE STABLE STABLE: never had the thing crash or freeze or slow down for no reason. The only reason my system ever runs slowly is because I am running lots of programs.
-Safe: Very few viruses and security threats for Macs out there. I can open my email without having to go through all of the scrubbing and constant vigilance.
-No Maintencance: No more disk cleanup or defragging.
-Time Machine Backups: I have a 2 TB Firewire 800 Lacie Quadra attached to my Desktop. It backs up changes every hour for 24 hours, every day for 7 days, every week for a month and then every month until storage space runs out. I just got the new laptop and it plugged in and it automatically loaded all of my preferences, documents, programs and music onto it. Let me repeat part of that: I didn't have to copy anything over manually or reinstall any programs. It did it all for me. I used to dread the hours it would take to get my new PC up to speed and working as I liked it. No more.
-Most of the applications you use are going to be free and available to use on Macs. No having to buy virus software or video stuff or whatever. You can transer your Adobe serials to Mac for like $15....I don't remember how that all went but it was easy and cheap.
-All of the hardware and software is completely compatible. NO problems in this arena. No having to go on the net and hunt for random little strings of code or patches or glitch fixes when to pieces of hardware decide not to play nice.
-Your mac runs XP as well. Seriously.
-The Customer Support is absolutely incredible as noted above.

The reason why I bring this up is that I don't think most PC power users (as our graphical needs make us) realize how much time is saved by using a Mac with our huge throughput of GB of data. As you get to know the machines more and more, you start to appreciate the extraordinary amount of thought put into the creation of the system and PCs start to appear as mismatched Frankensteins. Again, I LOVED PCs for 22 years. I used to code in DOS and whatnot.

I say you are better off spending the extra money to get a low-end Mac which you can upgrade down the line as you feel the need.

RaNT OVER...sorry Phil...I am sure all of the other Mac users here are cheering and nodding their heads vigorously. It all just needed to be said.

I'd just double check the costco policies concerning computer equipment. I know they were very relaxed in the passed and they got burnt pretty bad. People were buying laptops and returning them after 2 years just so they could get a new laptop. Since then I believe they changed the straight returns to 6 months. I don't know about genuine warranty claims.

So just double check if computers are in a different category than other electronics, and make sure you know the policy.

Other than that, for editing, a PC will be perfect. I recently switch to Mac at home for photography work and general at home computing, but I am still using a PC in the office (I'm a software developer during the day) and have been using a PC my whole life and I have never had an issue my PC's either, and have been using them for about 15 years. Sure, Windows 95 was clunky, but it was expected, and everything took forever back then. I don't think I've ever had XP crash on me.

That said, I would never buy another PC ever again. Even though I know that I can work with PC's just fine with no issues, everything is just cleaner on the Mac. The memory management is better with the Unix core so switching between memory intensive apps is much faster on the Mac in my opinion. Little annoyances of explorer.exe eating up all the CPU for a number of seconds go away. Nothing earth shattering, but an improvement. There are lots of little things that can't be quantified by looking at performace in CS3 on windows vs mac that make for a better use experience.

Quick look is amazing, and re-invents the way you view documents

the ability to hide windows in the dock is great, as apposed to having a ton of things in the task bar

built in time machine is very nice to have, and I have used it to recover information. It changes the way to work with files, where deleting or editing something isn't as big a deal as it used to be.

Spaces in cool too...I only use this for lightroom where lightroom is assigned to it's own space in full screen mode...no menus, no doc. If i want to get to my general workspace, control up gets me there.

Everyone claims that there is more software availble to the PC than the Mac, but I found that there are an amazing number of very good small utility apps that are either free or very cheap for the mac that are unmatched on the PC. Examples are super duper, carbon copy cloner, audacity, iSquint, visual hub, cyberduck, HandBrake, Mac the ripper...the list goes on and on.

Also, I did not find it to be any more money than a similar PC would have been, and I have not found a single thing that I can't do on the mac that I could do on the PC. It's quite the opposite.

Hey - I kept my mouth shut Phil!

Honestly though.... seriously consider just biting the bullet and getting a mac.... it isn't as ridiculously expensive as you want to believe, and it will save you sooooo much headache/heartache and you will actually enjoy working on your computer for once.

Basically, refer to the above two posts.... "what they said"

haha i can't say the mac argument doesn't have any merit

that said, i'm pretty sure i'm going with a pc from costco core2duo e8400 with 4gb RAM, should be plenty for my photo editing and transferring the XP pro from my desktop, which has served me well the past 4 years. It's $700 with quality components, so it just isn't worth spending an extra $1000 for a comparably spec'd imac.

thats my final answer!

That is the biggest misconception ever made in the computer world. I'm sorry, I think that's just f-ing ridiculous.

Good luck.

Whoa... I would bet that Phil is thinking this right now:


Imma do the things that i wanna do
I ain't got a thing to prove to you
I'll eat my candy with the pork and beans
Excuse my manners if i make a scene
I ain't gonna wear the clothes that you like
I'm fine and dandy with the me inside
One look in the mirror and i'm tickled pink
I don't give a hoot about what you think

lol

the passion people have for their products is admirable, for sure. in the end, we go for what works for us; some things might work better, but sometimes xxx amount of increased productivity is not worth the $$$ that can be used to accomplish other goals in life.

Such a lame excuse dude... I'm sorry. You're missing out bigtime, but you'll never know why. I guess some people just aren't suited for the juicy goodness of apple...

How'd you build a mac? No one can get mac parts to build on their own, right?

ya know what's funny about you maco whacko's is that even though the thread starter clearly states they're not interested in a mac, ya'll have to come in here and brow beat them into wanting one.

I get it though...it's how I am with handbags...I spend way to much money on them because I think they're sooo cute and I spend the rest of my days trying to convince people that spending $130 on a bag that carries my daughter's diapers around was the best purchase ever and they can't live w/out one, so I don't feel so stupid for buying it.

You guys totally amuse me...try not to take it personal, I'm just messing with you guys cause you get riled up so easily when it comes to this debate Mac's are great computers but there's something about their following that's...ummmm, defensive, yep, that's the word I'm looking for.

He meant configure.

And you never hear anyone say "I really love my PC!" do you? Nope!

So many people just don't understand Mariah. Some of them will and will realize what they were missing all of those years, others will never accept or be interested in change, and those are the people who will just never understand.

Oh well.

You kidding me? I Loove my PC (Dell 1420 laptop to be precise). I've got 2 OS's (dual boot Linux&Vista) both are fully color managed each has a great set of tools on them. I spend about 80% of my work time in vista and all of my personal time in Linux. It's a great setup for me.

I'd personally look for a system with a solid 3 year warranty quad core, and a respectable graphics card (I believe with an Nvidia card and some plugins you can get some sweet killer fast effects.).

Just a FYI...

Current special on Dell Home....

Inspiron 530

Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz
3 Gig RAM
500 Gig HD
Vista Home Premium
16x DVD Burner
22" Flat Panel Monitor
$799

Most photo editing apps will take advantage of the quad cores. I run Lightroom & PS CS3 and both will have multiple threads going when batch processing images. As others have said, going beyond 3GB in Windows offers little performance boost and none at all if you are not running the 64 bit version.

I have a Dell Precision T3400 with an e8500 cpu and love it. It is very upgradeable and has the capability of running 4 internal hard drives. I have heard that the components like the power supply and motherboard are of better quality that the stardard Vostro type systems.

I also recommend the HP LP2065 20" LCD: http://tiny.cc/tKezJ for $350.00

It is DDC compliant so with a compatible video card ColorEyes Display Pro will calibrate automatically http://tiny.cc/wXZSQ. It is an s-ips panel that is identical to much more expensive pro monitors: http://tiny.cc/Ydl5q

__________________________________

You may want to compare workstations at the Dell Outlet: http://tiny.cc/1iZx0 They come with a 3 year warranty standard and can be upgraded to 4 years.

Example:

Precision Workstation T3400 Mini-Tower: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 375W

Price: $969.00

Operating System:
Genuine Windows XP Pro with Vista Ultimate License

Memory:
2 GB DDR2 Non-ECC SDRAM 677MHz (2 DIMMs)

Hard Disk Drive:
160 GB SATA Hard Drive (WD Raptor) (10K RPM)

Video:
256MB PCIe x16 nVidia NVS 290, Dual Monitor DVI

Media Bay:
48X Max Variable CD ROM Drive + 48X CD RW/DVD Combo Drive

Misc.:
1394 Controller Card; Dell 19 in 1 Media Card Reader; USB Keyboard; Dell Optical USB 2-button Mouse

I DID say that!! Back towards the beginning of the topic! Like post #5 or something.

I LOVE MY PC! Really, I do!!

I respect my friends who want to buy a mac. But I see and have enough issues with Apple's products and software that I'm really not interested in switching. We don't try to convert each other anymore.

Wow, PC users revolt! Good to see

Mariah, I didn't say anything about macs until you said that a $2,500 PC configured by cyberpower would be the same, if not better than a $4,500 configured Mac Pro.

Then, as the debate heated, I gave my opinion, clearly noting that there is nothing wrong with buying a PC...it's just something I would never do again.

2 things that drive me insane with the whole Mac vs PC debate are the following statements:

Macs are more expensive than PC's.
Macs are perfect and if you switch to the Mac, all your issues go away.

These are both common misconceptions, and they are both wrong.

I do think the Mac is better, but nothing is perfect and switchers can expect to have some issues, if nothing more than a slight learning curve to overcome. Once this is overcome though, you start using computers different and more efficiently. Last quick example to add to my above comments would be spotlight. It re-invents the way you launch applications, freeing up your dock/desktop/quick launch bar. Command spacebar, type a few letters and your app is opened. Faster than grabing the mouse and doubleclicking an icon.


But, in either case, I'm sure that PC will serve you just fine as an editing machine, and if you have a monitor, that price is hard to beat.

This is a corner of the market that apple does not serve. No headless box with quality specs at a good price, so if that is what you want, apple doesn't have the answer. They have the Mac Mini which is a laptop with no monitor, something i'm sure you don't want, and they have the Mac Pro with a single server grade Xeon chip, which is expensive, and some will say overkill.

Once you add in a decent monitor, the iMac starts getting competive with PC prices. I paid over 700 for my monitor alone, and it was worth evey penny in my opinion.