My shoping dilemma

[Terri French]

I am in the market for a new computer to do my photo editing. I have a Nikon D200 and shoot raw. I need something I can run Photoshop CS2 on as well as Nikon Capture. I do not want to spend more than about $2500. Here are the three options I have come up with so far. If any of you experienced MAC users have advice I would love to hear it. I have never used a MAC before. We don't have a MAC store in my town, so I can't try anything out.

24" iMAC $2498
2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB SDRAM
SuperDrive 8X (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Apple Keyboard & Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X (US English)
24-inch widescreen LCD
AirPort Extreme
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

20" iMAC $2524
2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
3GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 1x2GB, 1x1GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive
ATI Radeon X1600/256MB VRAM
SuperDrive 8X (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Apple Keyboard & Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X (US English)
20-inch widescreen LCD
AirPort Extreme
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

or my PC option
Dell XPS 410 $1413 plus I might buy a 23" Apple Cinema Display for $1000
XPS 410 Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6400 (2MB L2 Cache,2.13GHz,1066 FSB)
Operating System Genuine Windows® XP Professional with re-installation CD
Memory 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 DIMMs
Keyboard Dell USB Keyboard
Monitor No Monitor
Video Card 256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro
Hard Drive 500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
CD or DVD Drive Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability

Thank you,
Terri French

 

[extraextra]

Personally, I'd go with the 20". But if you definitely want the real estate of a 24", 2GB will be enough and you can go with that one.

 

[polevault139]

If you don't need the screen real estate get the twenty inch. Instead of paying that huge amount of money for the 2GB memory stick jsut go with 2x1GB and get the 2GB stick when the price comes down. The graphics card is also a great choice.