Why so damn expensive?

[Jim Campbell]

In a year or two's time, the specs of the MacBooks are going to be better and make those machines look like the dinosaurs they are. The work that most of us do, however, remains unchanged. Sooner or later, even the Mac Minis will outpace many of the machines used in many production places at the mo.

I have to admit that this is something I've wondered about over recent years ... how much of the processor horsepower is actually needed and how much of it just people increasing the specs of a job because they can thanks to the improved processor horsepower.

Newsflash for the Braniac who sent in an A1 display poster artwork at 1200dpi ... no-one is going to stand closer to this job than 3 feet. It's going to get printed at about 75lpi, so 300dpi would have been overkill.

Likewise the A4 Illustrator EPS that arrived with a CMYK TIFF image watermarked in the b/g. Couldn't work out why the file behaved so sluggishly, until we opened the watermark in Photoshop. 2800dpi.

Nobody ... let me say that again ... nobody will be able to tell the difference between your finished, printed image at 300dpi, 600dpi, 1200dpi. Just because your scanner goes up to 1200dpi doesn't mean you have to use it! Fine - use the higher resolutions to extract extra detail if you need to enlarge from the original size, but for output ...? Fer chrissake, can we stop with the resolution machismo, already?

And ... to vaguely return to the point that prompted this rant - a MacBook running CS3 will happily deal with 300dpi and 600dpi images up to a fair old size. Anyone who tells you need higher res than that, well, see above.

Cheers!

Jim

 

[dogbone]

PS: I am a graphic designer who runs CS3 all day every day pretty intensively

I'm using an emac for pro GD, (yeah right, so why am I going for the ipod you may well ask) For the CS suite, it's really ram that makes the difference. It's not like you are going to be running massive gaussian blurs on 100mb images all day and even then it's ram wot you need not a quad core. But CS3 would be better with intel.

I'd agree with BV that a high end imac will more than satisfy your needs. But if I could afford it I'd get a quad mac with 16gig of ram just for the hell of it

The faster machines are more suited to 3D real time rendering or maybe complex Painter brushes. But you won't regret a mac pro and you can spend up big on a better monitor, that's probably the main reason to go mac pro.

Cheers for the helps guys much appreciated - Mac guys seem to be more helpful than their PC counterparts - another reason to switch..

We are a class above the hoi polloi pc users. We understand that the quality of life is not measured in a few lousy dollars, like are you planning on lining your coffin with money?

EDIT: check out this real world experience of top range mac and pc 2nd Post by lemonado

 

[darkcurse]

Don't confuse him; the MacBook Pro only has two cores, just like the MacBook.

No I'm not, the OP was originally talking about purchasing a Mac Pro.

 

[Hmac]

HUH. Never heard of anything like this from friends living in Europe.
Wow, I guess things are diff in Canada?? I bring electronics back and forth from the USA and never had to fill out a form. Wow, chalk one up for the USA! haha

MY friends in Europe tell me there is no customs duty on laptops, but they would have to pay 17.5% VAT. And yes, they do look at the serial number to determine the machine's country of origin and date of import. And they will want to know why you didn't fill out the laptop form at home before your departure.

"chalk one up for the USA"? It has nothing to do with the USA. It has to do with European and Canadian Customs policies. You can buy whatever you want here. How much it costs you to get it home is completely up to the country where you live.