Newbie Q&A Don't flame me... please... ahem

[SellPro]

Well, I'm worn out on PC's. I bang the f*ck out of them with Adobe Photoshop, Video editing, multi tasking, Music conversions, etc.

I am seriously considering the 24" iMac because I'm toning down on heavy editing and love the idea of no fire breathing tower.. I just built my loved one a freaking fast PC at Ferrari level... with stupid specs for a house wife (or almost any gamer for that matter...) lets say that four 10,000RPM Cheetah drives gets a tad old to listen to...

It seems to me the following though, in converting to mac
1. Switching all my software like Adobe, is going to cost me a mortgage payment and lots of hair pulling.
2. Can I have a 2nd HD inside? A fire wire version is not making me happy. The transfer rates would make me kick the machine.... THEN stomp on it. THEN pee on it while its plugged in... to a 220 outlet....
3. Can one have Dual DVD Burners on the machine itself? Again the fire wire transfer speeds....
4. Will a high end iMac take memory like PC-6400? Will it support PC2-8500 and up?
5. And it seems, and I do admit to not knowing anything about Mac's, that the Bus speeds are slower than PC's... I'm reading the specs on most of them at a pathetic 800MHz?

If all of the upgrade crap is too much, then yes, I would take a Mac Pro. I just am really, really, really tired of the space, pulling towers all about (to plug and unplug stuff,) dust, vacuum around a big tower, etc.
Then theres the susceptibility to our twin 6 year old boys...

Ok... "show me the light!"

 

[Samarium]

Maybe if you post in a serious manner, somebody might help you.

 

[SellPro]

Maybe if you post in a serious manner, somebody might help you.

I'm dead serious. Sorry... not stiff and boring.

Different strokes....

You know us nut ball PC guys...

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

I'm dead serious. Sorry... not stiff and boring.

Different strokes....

You know us nut ball PC guys...

Well what do you plan to do with your Mac? If it's just Adobe stuff you don't need all those high specs that you are used to with PC's. There is an extreme amount of hardware-OS integration that will take care of most lag. Don't worry none of the iMacs are by any means slow.

 

[James Howlett]

You seem like you want a mac pro. Upgradeable high end ram, at least 2 hdds inside, dual burners. Thats what a mac pro is. The imac is good until its old then you can't upgrade, but coming from the pc side you will probably wanna upgrade as you go.

I got an iMac because it suits my needs of light video editing, and gaming, while replacing my POS windows machine. You on the other hand seem to do a lot of pro app stuff. So get a pro machine.

 

[Jack Flash]

1. I'd contact Adobe technical support and see if they can transfer your licenses to the Mac versions of their software.
2. No, you can have one HDD. An iMac has a Firewire 800 port for an external drive.
3. No, the iMac has one DVD Burner. I'm not sure how Firewire 800 transfer speeds adversely affect your DVD burning.
4. iMacs take PC2-6400 RAM sticks. The speed is 800 Mhz.
5. Despite "pathetic" specs compared to home-built PCs, Macs tend to perform at speeds that might just be able to keep up with your ego.

 

[RickT67]

Former pc guy myself.
Get the iMac - spend the extra $100 or so and upgrade to 4gb of RAM
I have VMWare fusion and it runs XP faster on my iMac than any pc that I've ever owned (funny thing is that I run windows to help troubleshoot friends and family pc issues).

My external drives are quiet and I have an external DVD burner too.

I am happier than a pig in s%#@ with my iMac. I didn't know anything about macs til I bought a used eMac from my company a little over a year ago. I've "converted" several people and I've seen the pc "stone wall" that I used to be behind when I talk with other pc guys about macs.

I know it sounds a little goofy, but once you've made the switch, you'll wonder what took you so long

 

[Chundles]

DVD burning can't even stress USB 2.0 let alone FW400 so there's no issue there.

Our HD video and design clients all use FW800 external drives and have no issue with transfer speed, if you're going to be streaming HD then you'd probably be after a Mac Pro and some sort of SAS RAID if you wanted internal storage or a fibre channel connection to an external RAID.

If you think the 800MHz bus speed is too slow then why are you considering an iMac - they're fine for pretty much everything but if you've looked at the specs and they're apparently not for you - though all the Adobe apps run beautifully on them - especially with 4GB of RAM - then you should be looking at a Mac Pro.

The form factor of the tower is the only way of getting performance of that magnitude so that's what you're going to have to get.

 

[sfroom]

2. Can I have a 2nd HD inside? A fire wire version is not making me happy. The transfer rates would make me kick the machine...

I haven't checked the tech specs, but Firewire 800 is pretty darn fast. What are you using externals storage for anyways? Firewire 800 is plenty fast for HD video playback, backup, etc. You could put a high speed drive in an external enclosure for more speed, if you'd like.

3. Can one have Dual DVD Burners on the machine itself? Again the fire wire transfer speeds...

You don't need fire wire transfer speeds to burn, firewire should be plenty sufficient to burn 16x dual layer discs.

4. Will a high end iMac take memory like PC-6400? Will it support PC2-8500 and up?

The iMacs take PC-6400. It will not support higher clocked ram.

5. And it seems, and I do admit to not knowing anything about Mac's, that the Bus speeds are slower than PC's... I'm reading the specs on most of them at a pathetic 800MHz?

The bus speeds are lower, but that is a function of the all-in-one design. It's a slim computer, built with some laptop components. This is not to say that it is slow, by any stretch of the imagination. Mac's have been beating similarly configured PC's in Photoshop benchmarks for quite some time, as far as I know.

The speed of a computer depends on the operating system as much as the hardware. I think you would be VERY pleased with a 3.06 iMac. It's a very fast machine.

 

[xxjuicymintxx]

Mac Pro.

EDIT - just don't pee on it, haha.

 

[SellPro]

You seem like you want a mac pro. Upgradeable high end ram, at least 2 hdds inside, dual burners. Thats what a mac pro is. The imac is good until its old then you can't upgrade, but coming from.......

I think my past habits reflect that once I build and buy a machine, I never upgrade. I usually just keep it for 2-3 years and buy a new one. So looks like if I just buy a stripped 3GHz iMac 24", I can upgrade the memory and HD at the time I buy it, to faster or higher-end items and be done with it.

By the way, I didn't see anyone mention that the 800MHz problem I referred to, can be taken care of with the 3GHz model's 1066MHz bus speeds....

I believe in reality, an iMac will suit my needs. I hate the idea of a giant tower... Yet another... in the house.

 

[Icarus73]

I can't believe no one's mentioned that the new iMac has a 1066mHz bus speed. Which is quite good.

Any mac is going to be faster than a PC of the same specs just because of how the OS works.

I have an "old, vintage" mac (an iBook G4) and while it's still holding up great with no speed issues for me, I'm upgrading to the new 2.8gHz imac next month for Audio Recording work.

I think you'll be quite satisfied. Firewire 800 speeds are quite fast, so the lack of a second internal HD or DVD drive shouldn't bother you that much. However, if upgrade abilities are a concern for you, don't even bother with the iMac. That's not what it's designed for. Go for the Mac Pro. She won't let you down with anything.

 

[flopticalcube]

Although the FSB of the new iMacs is 1066MHz, the memory bus is 800MHz. Things are slower on iMacs than comparable PCs because they use a lot of laptop parts including CPU, RAM and video card. This is the tradeoff to be able to attain such a slim casing, although some would say that it would be possible to do this with desktop components as well.