What to Buy

[chil-yinee]

Am trying to decide between Dell XPS8300 and an iMAC.
Am an author; take over 1000 digital photos of travel per year. Do much editing and artistic creativity with them, so want best system and display I can get. Need large hard drive. Also am semi-invalid, spending much time confined to bed, so want to be able to watch tv on my computer.

Would an all-in-one or desktop be better for me? Looked at the 27" imac. Do I need a monitor that large? Want to be able to use CDs and documents written on a PC with Windows. Would need to instal Photoshop on a mac but the photo progeam that comes with the Dell is adequate.

Any and all advice welcome.

 

[Hawkeye16]

I use windows on my Mac to remote into work and work on windows and mac applications and documents at the same time. I think Mac is definitely the way to go in that regard.

If you are confined to bed a lot of the time do you think you may be better off with a laptop? The MBP 15" is on heck of a machine. It would almost guaranteed preform as well as the Dell if not better.

The only thing I do not do is watch TV on my mac from what you asked about so I cannot contribute to that. I watch all of my shows off of the internet when not actually watching a television.

 

[MJL]

I'll get blasted for this but when you are confined to bed you do not want to have a Mac. The Mac is running very hot in comparison to other brands. The aluminium gets dented easily too when it gets dropped.

Make sure you do not get a glossy screen - very tiring and liable to reflections (it bothers me a lot, some people does not have troubles) although the glossy screens have vibrant colors for photographs.

There is a marked difference in the type of screens that you can get, some of the more expensive computers use IPS or e-IPS which is very good for photographic work. Some of the Dell business models are very good. Toshiba has also some good business models (e.g. the Tecra) In the past I had top of the line IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpads and they were very, very quiet and very solid. However Lenovo no longer has the same high standard that the IBM engineered equipment had.

My suggestion would be to get a laptop but ensure you get a laptop that does not have the air intake for the fan on the bottom. (It used to be that laptops had a shorter life expectancy than a desktop but these days it is about the same)

If you often do fall asleep unexpectedly then you may want to consider something that is rather tough that can withstand knocks like the Panasonic toughbook.