Adobe InDesign and a new Mac

[AtHomeBoy_2000]

I work for a church that is looking to switch from Word to Adobe InDesign for making church bulletins. As part of that, I am thinking of recommending we buy a Mac to run it on since they tend to handle graphics programs better. Would we be able to get away with using a Mac Mini or e-mac?

 

[Abulia]

Possibly, but you'll want to up the RAM. InDesign and Photoshop like RAM.

If you're doing minimal graphics work, then you're probably okay w/ a mini or an eMac. If you'll do some moderate graphics work then consider the iMac; the iMac has a better GPU than the mini or eMac.

Of course, if this is serious layout work (doesn't sound like it) then you'd be looking at a PowerMac.

 

[zelmo]

In our prepress department we use quite a few 1.25GHz Power Mac G4's with 768MB RAM. You mini or eMac, or any current Mac, will serve you well for the amount of work you intend to do. 1GB RAM is nice if you can afford it.

And speaking for the print community, I applaud you for moving away from Word for your design needs. InDesign is a great choice ever since CS 1 was released.

 

[wichard]

a great place i have found for good cheap ram, dealram.com

 

[HiRez]

I use InDesign to lay out a full 4-color, 300 dpi print magazine on my old 800 MHz PowerBook. It's not a problem, although as others have said, get more RAM (minimum 768 MB). I also put a 7200 rpm drive (Hitachi 7K60) into my PowerBook.

 

[solvs]

If what you do is fairly simple (which I'm guessing it is if you were using Word), you could try Pages. It's part of iWork and more of a page layout program than a word processor, but should be able to handle word and page documents pretty easily for what you want to do with it. An eMac or mini with enough RAM should be able to handle that decently enough. Though I'd recommend maybe a refurbished iMac with extra RAM and AppleCare.

Any of those will be able to handle InDesign as well.

 

[zelmo]

If what you do is fairly simple (which I'm guessing it is if you were using Word), you could try Pages. It's part of iWork and more of a page layout program than a word processor, but should be able to handle word and page documents pretty easily for what you want to do with it. An eMac or mini with enough RAM should be able to handle that decently enough. Though I'd recommend maybe a refurbished iMac with extra RAM and AppleCare.

Any of those will be able to handle InDesign as well.

hehe. I was gonna mention Pages, since they have some canned layouts that would make it very simple to put a bulletin together, but I didn't know if they were printing digitally in-house (some churches do) or sending files to a commercial printer. As a printer, I'm a little bit leery of any application that costs that much less than industry standards InDesign and Quark. TANSTAAFL.

 

[HiRez]

As a printer, I'm a little bit leery of any application that costs that much less than industry standards InDesign and Quark. TANSTAAFL.

Pages has potential, but I find it to be still goofy. Around version 2.1 I figure it'll be worth using seriously. InDesign is amazing though, I really love this app. Everything is clean and intuitive and there's a lot of power there. And as I said, I lay out a 300 dpi CMYK magazine on an 800 MHz PowerBook, that's good performance.

 

[za9ra22]

I use inDesign extensively on my mini 1.25/512 and it works extremely well. More memory and faster hard drives are always nice, but not at all essential.

I've also used the same software on my G4/450 for a few years now, and though it has had replacement drives, they are still 5400rpm units, and the system also has 512Mb RAM. It works very well.