Who uses imac for their graphic design work

[devilla101]

Hello, I'm looking into upgrading my computer some time next year since I've had mine for 4 years (Pentium III 450 10G HDD with 196 RAM)And believe me, this thing still chugs along quite well in my graphic design work (mostly print based and web work)

I am currently looking into buying the new imac 20" with 160G and 1gig ram plus a 20" screen to boot for next year. And plan to upgrade to Adobe CS sometime in the middle of next year. I know its not expandable but I never did add anything on my current computer (even ram)so the tower was a waste of space

I was looking into the Dual 1.8 with a 17" but thats really out of my price range and also for my work, that is a lot of power that won't be used to its full potential. My friend who has a Powermac G4 700? said his is still fast enough for graphics and its the mac that waits for him instead of him waiting for his mac to do stuff.

Anyway just curious if any graphic designers can offer their input

 

[Mac MMG]

I just upgraded my home computer to the 20" iMac. My wife is a commercial photographer and upgraded from the 17" need mor real estate for retouching.

The same configuration that you are thinking of buying. Yes this would be an exceptable graphic station on a budget.

I am running a G4 Dual 1.25 with a 20" monitor at work, and it is faster but you get what you pay for. BTW I am a Art Director with a marketing firm.

 

[jayscheuerle]

Go easy on yourself

Just about any machine made in the past 3 years is plenty fast for 95% of any graphic design you'll do. What's important in OSX is to load up on RAM with whatever you get.

 

[SuperChuck]

Believe it or not, I do graphic and web design for a living, and I am still using my old iMac Special Edition DV. It is a quarter of the computer you are talking about (if that) and it is still able to chug along after nearly four years. Slow? Yes. But for the first two years, it was pretty zippy. I am now buying a new computer, for obvious reasons, but I thought you should know that what you are considering is roughly the equivalent by today's standards of what I bought for the same purpose four years ago, and it did the job very well for two years, and acceptably well for another two. In retrospect, had I spent the additional money for a tower, it would still be fairly zippy today, but for the money I saved on the iMac, I have been very pleased with its performance. Just make sure you max out the RAM.

One important consideration - a second monitor can only be used for mirroring with iMacs, which is why I am not condsiering buying another one. If you don't mind being limited to one screen, this is not an issue.

 

[Lain.v2]

Personally I would buy the G5 1.6 (and I did) for $1800, I would (and I did) swap the SuperDrive for a ComboDrive which would bring the price down to $1600. If you shop around you should be able to get 10% discount, but I won't incude this in my equation. So in total you are saving $600 over the iMac, albeit without the DVD burning functionality, but twice as fast and it will probably be twice as long before you need to upgrade again. With the $600 saving you can buy a 19" LCD monitor and extra RAM, but not from Apple. Furthermore you can use your current PC monitor as a secondary monitor to place all your photoshop / illustrator toolbars on, so you will have pretty much have all 19" to view your designs.

When its time to upgrade again you will have a 19"LCD to use with your G6 or G7...

... come to think of it the 20" LCD on the iMac is a bit of a waste since it can only be used with the iMac...