The total cost to switch to Mac

[pencilbox]

Thanks all.

I wish I can talk like you guys technically but I'm sure I wouldn't be able to tell much difference between Snow Leopard and Windows 7 besides which one looks nicer to me. As long as I'm able to fire up the adobe applications, fast enough to work, no crashes and able to use the search file option, I'm pretty happy with anything I think.

Need more advice here if you can. After reading some of the posts here, I have called up Dell and asked for help to quote a spec that is equivalent to quad core mac pro. Will the below spec be sufficient for intensive graphic use and last me for the next 4 years? It includes a 2408WFP monitor too.

Dell Precision T3500
Quad Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) W35201
Dell Precision Heatsink
2.66GHz/8MB L2 Cache/4.8GT/s1
Intel(R) X58 Chipset (Tylersburg) - Nehalem Microarchitecture
Integrated Broadcom(R) 5761 Gigabit Ethernet1 Controller
Integrated High Definition Audio1
Minitower Orientation without 1394 Port1
1TB SATA (7200RPM) Hard Disk Drive
12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 SDRAM Memory, 1066MHz,ECC
512MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX580, DisplayP1ort,DVI Capable
No Floppy Drive
Resource DVD for Precision1
QuietKey Keyboard (English)
Dell Laser Mouse1 NN812-Dell(TM)
2408WFP UltraSharp(TM)24"Widescreen1 Flat Panel LCD Monitor(Analog&DVI)

The cost is $3000 include Tax + shipping + handling

Do you think is a better buy?

 

[Tesselator]

You don't necessarily need to go the Mac Pro route. At my last job, I had a Mac Pro and it was a fantastic system. I, too, am freelancing full time now and have been using my 2007 iMac without issue. Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are just as fast (PS actually starts up much faster for some reason), I have a second monitor connected to it, and the 24" display is greatness.

Hi thanks, there are a few refurbised imac on sale at my local apple store, can imac supports large graphics files that go up to gb in sizes? I work with lots of high res photos for my print work though I don't do any photography editing.

Yes it can.

But scientifically speaking there should almost never be a case where a photographic image needs to be much larger than the camera originally took. Certainly never gigabytes in size. With layers they can become 100's of megs occasionally but those are hopefully merged before printing. It's mathematically incorrect - even tho some people do it anyway.

 

[scoobs69]

The big misconception for your judgement is the $8,000. The OP doesn't need to spend $8,000 for a new Mac to run design apps, especially if they're not going to be dabbling in video.

As far as Mac vs. Windows because his clients are windows based doesn't make a difference. Adobe CS3/CS4 are entirely compatible back and forth. The only hang-up may be fonts, though "open type" fonts fixed the majority of those issues.

Since the CS design apps aren't multi-threaded, a new iMac that can take up to 8GB of ram will really be all the OP needs to efficiently run the CS design apps. If the OP wishes to push beyond 8GB of memory, the 2.66GHz quad is tops what they'll need for next 3-4 years.

A refurb 2.66GHz Mac Pro is $2,150
the HP 2475 is $600
an Eye One Lite is $150
6GB of ram upgrade is $130
3 Internal 1TB hard drives is $330

$3,360

Call Adobe and explain you're switching from PC to Mac, and they'll give you a migration break on your Creative Suite. ...provided you already own Creative Suite for the PC. If not, throw in the $1,800 and you're still only spending $5,160.

If you wanna save a quite a bundle, get the following:

20" 2.66GHz iMac is $1,200
6GB memory upgrade kit OWC $175
HP 2475 display $600
Eye One lite $150
3 750GB FW800 drives $480

$2,605 - That's a $755 savings you can throw at the CS4 design suite.

For $2,605 I'd definitely consider switching.


To answer your last question, yes the iMac can handle multi-layered photoshop files up to 1GB, if not a bit larger. My 2.16GHz iMac with 3GB of memory can handle that easily, though with a little wait here and there. I will confidently say 95% of the time the iMac is waiting for me when I'm designing food packaging.

It's when I get into editing and processing wedding photography is where I stress my 2.16GHz white iMac's 3GB of memory beyond it's means. ...and I'm maxed out at 3GB of ram. I never thought I'd say photography seems to stress a computer's memory a helluva lot more than graphic design.

@ Tess; working on multiple layered files doesn't necessarily mean photographic work. Sure the file can/will incorporate photography, but the final PSD file could be 30" x 40" with 30 layers and plenty of layer blends and effects. Sure you merge down and send a 'flat' for proofing and printing, but you need to save the layered file for editing if changes come back from the client.

Well I've owned three different MacBooks, an iMac and a Mac Pro since Leopard was released. None of them were free of these problems.

And anyway, this is going way off topic. Let's just imagine that Leopard is better than Windows, is it really 8000 better than Windows and worth all that investment when the newest version of Windows is easily the best yet?

 

[Gonk42]

Thanks all.

I wish I can talk like you guys technically but I'm sure I wouldn't be able to tell much difference between Snow Leopard and Windows 7 besides which one looks nicer to me. As long as I'm able to fire up the adobe applications, fast enough to work, no crashes and able to use the search file option, I'm pretty happy with anything I think.

Need more advice here if you can. After reading some of the posts here, I have called up Dell and asked for help to quote a spec that is equivalent to quad core mac pro. Will the below spec be sufficient for intensive graphic use and last me for the next 4 years? It includes a 2408WFP monitor too.

Dell Precision T3500
Quad Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) W35201
Dell Precision Heatsink
2.66GHz/8MB L2 Cache/4.8GT/s1
Intel(R) X58 Chipset (Tylersburg) - Nehalem Microarchitecture
Integrated Broadcom(R) 5761 Gigabit Ethernet1 Controller
Integrated High Definition Audio1
Minitower Orientation without 1394 Port1
1TB SATA (7200RPM) Hard Disk Drive
12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 SDRAM Memory, 1066MHz,ECC
512MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX580, DisplayP1ort,DVI Capable
No Floppy Drive
Resource DVD for Precision1
QuietKey Keyboard (English)
Dell Laser Mouse1 NN812-Dell(TM)
2408WFP UltraSharp(TM)24"Widescreen1 Flat Panel LCD Monitor(Analog&DVI)

The cost is $3000 include Tax + shipping + handling

Do you think is a better buy?

I won't enter the debate on better buy but I don't think it is a good idea to ask Dell to match the spec in the literal way that they have as you could configure the T3500 (much) more cheaply.

For example, with the Dell there are six slots so 12GB can be configured as 6x2GB rather than 3x4GB (the Apple only has 4 slots) which should be a lot cheaper.

It should also be a lot cheaper to go for the very base T3500 (but with the graphics card you want) and then add third party drives and memory in the same way as it is cheaper to do this for the Apple Mac Pro.

Even with the monitor, it is sometimes cheaper to buy the Dell monitor via a third party (this is the case in the UK where companies like scan buy in bulk when Dell are discounting so can undercut Dell when they are not discounting).

 

[malicksmith]

Sorry if any of this is repeat from users above. But if you're really wanting to switch to Mac, obviously with an intel Mac you can run Windows. Might be a little bit of a cost upfront, but you can run dual systems, keep windows software for now, and learn about the mac end too.

I am both a Mac and a PC user. I prefer Mac, but sometimes you gotta use a PC. I think it only makes you more valuable if you know how to use both effectively.

I would argue in favor of switching, simply because most design houses are mac users. You are using a PC now, but that's not the norm in the design world. You'll switch to a new job eventually, and it would be a shame to lose a job simply because you do not know how to use a Mac.