olley

Hi, I need a Mac, steady jim, sit down have drink; deep breaths do it for me, shock can be a nasty thing.

Heres the story, as you may know the youngest daughter has been doing a photography course at notts uni originally, and is now in lisbon uni for a year before returning to notts for the final year.

When she started this we just bought her the cheapest pc we could get, an Acer from tesco's 300 notes, poor old thing is not really up to it anymore (if it ever was) and as has been said on here most if not all photography dept. here and abroad use macs, so that what she wants.

Now I know zilch about them, but money is a problem so I want to spend as little as poss but its got to be up to the job, would a Macbook 1.83Ghz 512 ram from PCWorld at £500 do the job?

Olley

camcondor

Hi Olley
I know I've been the butt of some of some err,conflict-type postings of late, but I thought I'd try to help anyway even though I'm not Jim..... with a Fine Art (Photography) grad partner whose Macs (yup, more than one) I look after - the short answer to your question is NO, in my opinion (and partners)
.
If you want to get daughter a laptop specifically, then either get a good used G4 17" PowerBook last-model with maxed out RAM (2GB) and the biggest HDD you can find, (100-120GB)(you can get good buys for about £500 - £800 on ebay, and there are other mac specialists who do used recon ones) or spend the best part of about £2000 on the best spec Macbook available new.
If you buy the cheapest Macbook she'll be very frustrated trying to run CS2 / CS3 - it'll do it very slowly, rather like trying to do it on the Acer she has at present. Future proof it as much as you can as Mac laptops are not the easiest or cheapest to upgrade. She needs the extra processing power of the higher spec, believe me. I inherited a nice 12" Powerbook for that very reason -wasn't powerful enough. Hope that helps.

Laurie

American Dream

Hi Olley,

I totally agree with Laurie's reply.


"either get a good used G4 17" PowerBook last-model with
maxed out RAM (2GB) and the biggest HDD you can find,
(100-120GB)(you can get good buys for about £500 - £800
on ebay,"

I used to work in a lot of Graphics Studios and the MAC was the machine of choice for the professionals.

It multitasks sooooo much more efficiently and utilised memory better.

CS2/3 and graphics manipulation requires a lot of Physical ram and a fast processor to run efficiently. with stability.

Buying a mediocre spec Mac now will inevitably end up in frustration watching pages and images render slowly.

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Jim

Hi Olley, I know you you meant the other Jim, ScotMacJimland, but I would like to agree with Laurie and Steve For photography, you do have to spend a bit of dosh. Even modest size photo files can become massive whilst you are working on them in photoshop. The program needs both as much disk space and ram as you can afford and as we all know how rich you are, that shouldn't be a problem

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ScotJimland

Hi Olley..

I totally agree with the advice already given, a second hand 17" G4 Power book is the tool for the job.. and if not already done, upgrade to Leopard OSX 10.5

I wouldn't be concerned that it was 'pre loved', Macs are very reliable and owners look after them, my 17" G4 Power Book is now three years old and hasn't missed a beat, I upgraded the memory to 2GB for the reasons Laurie gave and no, it's not for sale...

Good luck with the search..

Jim

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Papa Smurf

Any art packages such as CS3 is extremely resource hungry. Get as much Ram, hard disc and as good a graphics card ( or MAC equivilent - I dunno, I use PC's exclusively) as you can. You will really regret not doing so.

Also, CS3 is not a cheap program, be prepared to factor that cost in too.

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olley

Hi guys thanks for all the replys, if only I had taken up doorkeeping I would have the dosh no problem.

So a secondhand G4 sounds like the one to go for, ok I will have a look on ebay, CS3 is no problem as I aquired a copy this year from a fellow member of the other site with a crack, chloe loaded it onto the acer but gave up with it, much to sloooooooow.

Olley

ScotJimland

Hi Olley

I found this one after a quick Google

http://www.preloved.co.uk/index.cfm?...rt&cs=654b6258

If you can't get a copy of Adobe CS3 for Mac let me know, I have Adobe CS version 8 for Mac

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olley

Hi jim thanks, do they all have built in wi-fi?

Olley

ScotJimland

Yes they do, in Mac speak it's called .. "Airport"

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