Mac or PC? What do you work on?

[kevin107]

Just curious.. I work on a Mac Pro at work, my last job had me on a G4.. I also know people who only design on PC.

I personally have a PC at home that I use for the occasional freelance jobs..

I thought it was dying before troubleshooting a random restart issue (which turned out to be faulty ram), and was considering a mac for home.. but i couldnt bring myself to spend seemingly 2x as much for an imac than what i could build a comparable or faster pc for.

[Virgo Nightingale]

I have a Mac G4 at work with CS2 and Quark 6.5. At home I have a PC with the exact same software. The major issues I have are font compatibility issues and slightly different shortcuts. When I buy my next computer, it may be a top-of-the-line Mac, I'll just have to see how much money I have at that given time.

[(gra-ph!c-D'sig-nah)]

It doesn't sound like a mac or Pc issue....it sounds like you don't know what you want. I never dealt with this issue because I said to my self "that is what I want"....DAMN the price....

Since you already have a PC....get the mac and have both...that is what I have at home....I have a 24" imac and a PC and I have a Dell laptop. You can never have enough electronics. If rolling black outs start happening again - it is probably me working!

[urstwile]

Puh-leeze, let's not start another Mac vs. PC thread. Done to death. I'm sure someone will be bring along the dead horse smiley any minute.

You use the tools you choose to use. The "which one works better" argument, not to say that you've necessarily raised it, but others will, is moot, finis, kaput, done, over, it's been served. :)

[CamarotaDesign]

Dual P4 with a Nvidia Quadro graphics card, and I've bragged about this too many times....

It's faster than any Mac I've worked on.

So there!!!

[kevin107]

Puh-leeze, let's not start another Mac vs. PC thread. Done to death. I'm sure someone will be bring along the dead horse smiley any minute.

You use the tools you choose to use. The "which one works better" argument, not to say that you've necessarily raised it, but others will, is moot, finis, kaput, done, over, it's been served. :)


I was asking what people used.. not what they prefer or which works better.

[MikeTheVike]

I love my mac at work, and love OSX and the software it comes with. I do want a mac at home, but I also find it hard to pay so much more. Someday when I'm rich maybe ;)

[urstwile]

I was asking what people used.. not what they prefer or which works better.

Yes, I know, as I said in my reply, I wasn't saying that you necessarily raised it, but it's gonna happen. That's the way these things always go, in my experience.

[Exodus]

I was asking what people used.. not what they prefer or which works better.

While your intentions were different... it always ends up that way.

As for me:

Work: Mac G4
Home: PC and Sony Vaio Laptop

Looking to get a Mac for home. My laptop is about to die so I've been looking at the Powerbooks. I just do not have the cash right now.

[mojoprime]

eventually, someone will say "macs rule and pcs suck" and then it's all over. i use a pc at work and a mac at home. i have less trouble with the machine at home and it's 5 years older than the one i use at work and feels just as fast with CS2.

but i will use whatever it takes to pay the bills.

[thetinar]

G5 at work, PC at home. :)

[urstwile]

eventually, someone will say "macs rule and pcs suck" and then it's all over.
That's the point I was tryin' to make. :)

And then, after someone says that, someone else will point out some flaw in macs, and then it'll be pcs rule and macs suck. Etc., etc., etc.

Oy gevalt.

[mojoprime]

why doesn't anyone ever say "i use LaTeX on a unix workstation, with 256mb of ram and pIII 350"?

that would be a winner. ;)

[urstwile]

teehee. :D

[ecsyle]

Both. At work its Windows, at home its a dual G4 Mac and some Linux flavors on some PCs.

[Lonepine]

Home: G4
Work: G5

Yes, I'm a person of few words.

[mattbing]

I think Mac is the way to go. I've worked on both. PC's have an ugly interface and are not overly user friendly, or intuitive. I think the price dif is worth it.


A little off topic...

Here's my dilemma.
I have a G5 dual 2.3 GHz at work with 1.5G of ram.

At home I have a G4 with I think 1G of ram. I increased the RAM awhile back, and put in another drive, because the thing was so bloody slow (especially when working in Flash or Dreamweaver). It seemed to speed it up at first and now it's the same old thing – very slow....

so anyways, I'm thinking of getting one of those new 24" imacs.
MY QUESTION:
Are these imacs anywhere near as quick as the Dual Processor G5s?

[budafist]

About this Mac:
Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac

....what does that mean? is that a Mac and a PC?

[pmkcreations]

I bought a g3 400Mhz iMac a while back for home. It still runs as well as it ever did.
Now that I'm on a 20" Intel iMac at work, I can't wait until i can get one for home.
It was a long time before I felt I had outgown the g3. I imagine it will be the same for the Intel iMac.

[kevin107]

About this Mac:
Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac

....what does that mean? is that a Mac and a PC?

PowerPC is the CPU type.. like the new macs are Intel based rather than PowerPC

[jimking]

At work PCs, G4s, my station a Intel PowerMac. At home a G4.

[MD]

ALERT! VIRUS WARNING FOR ALL COMPUTERS

There is a dangerous virus being passed around electronically, orally, and by hand.
This virus is called Worm-Overload-Recreational-Killer (WORK).
If you receive WORK from any of your colleagues, your boss, or anyone else via any means DO NOT TOUCH IT. This virus will wipe out your private life completely.

If you should come into contact with WORK, take two good friends to the nearest grocery store. Purchase the antidote known as Work-Isolating-Neutralizer-Extract (WINE) or Bothersome-Employer-Elimination-Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your
system.

You should forward this warning to 5 friends. If you do not have 5 friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life.

[scratchmarc]

Work: Dell Dimension 9150 with dual 19" flatscreens

Home: Sony Vaio, Dell Inspiron laptop, and (believe it or not) a Mac clone PowerComputing PowerBase 200 with System 7.6.1!

I'm sure at some point I'll get a G5 but what I have does what I need for now.

~marc

[Satchel]

Work: G5
Home: Dell XPS Laptop
Home soon (hopefully): iMac

[BJMRGTIVR6]

Work: Dual 2.3Ghz G5, 2.5 GB Ram 21" CRT
Home: P4 PC, 1GB Ram 19" LCD

My wife talked me into an iMac and then when i said something about actually doing it complained about spending and now it is off (for a while).Last design job (PC) one before that (Mac). Happy with both, both have faults and I prefer Mac overall for its simplicity and non-cluttering affect.

In the future, I don't know what Mac to get...an all in one 24"iMac or a more expensive but expandable Mac Tower and possibly anothe rmonitor since the wife will no doubt still want to use the PC (until she falls in love with the Mac). thoughts on iMac Vs. Mac Tower anyone? maybe iMac is a good starter and then jump into the Towers?

[idaho]

Work: Dual 2.66 Ghz Mac Pro, 4 gig ram.
Home: Same

Why even bother with getting PC hardware? Get an Intel Mac and use Boot Camp. Works beautifully. We also have Parallels Desktop installed so that we don't have to reboot into Windows everytime we need something, like email (unfortunately our IS guys won't let us connect Entourage or iMail to our Exchange servers - the bastards!).

In all it really doesn't matter what system people use, it's how they use what they have. If you only know one of the two platforms it would be a damn good idea to learn the other. The broader your experience, the more marketable you become.

[MD]

Any of you intel imac users out there - how well does it run design programs? Does it feel pretty responsive? How does it compare to say a G5 tower?

[PrintDriver]

My Horse beating stick rotted away. Or so I was told.

Work: G5 two-gig dually with 2 gig ram and lots o fun software, a G3 sporting the latest in OS9 and Quark 4 for all you diehards and a PC-GOK to run the vinyl plotter and run certain softs in PC mode for when all else fails in translation.

MattBing, your Mac slowdown may be due to other things besides ram and drive space. A few things that come to mind are disk fragmentation causing lack of scratch space (yes macs do occasionally need to be defragged), failure to allow maintenance scripts to run, an over-abundance of active fonts, or an over-abundance of Adobefntxx.lst files. Those are the easies. It gets harder to find the cuplrit if those aren't it.

[Virgo Nightingale]

My Horse beating stick rotted away. Or so I was told.
Perhaps you need to invest in a horse-beating lead pipe.

[PrintDriver]

Wouldn't get slivers with that. I was thinking more like Garden Hose filled with sand though...

[Derfie]

work: 1.8 GHz G5 Tower, 1 gig ram (will be 3 yrs old next month) Only a few bugs, as it was the first model G5 to be released. Lacie 22" CRT monitor.

Home:
Dual 450 GHz G4 Tower, 750 MB ram (just turned 6 yrs.)
Viewsonic 22" CRT Monitor- I installed a DVD/Super Drive, and it still performs great, not quite as fast as my G5, but it's my home computer.


14" Apple Ibook (mostly for my husband's use)

I have been happy with the longevity of the apples. Also my brother is becoming apple certified, so "Free Tech Support" Need I say more.:D

[Silence04]

Work: Dual 2.3ghz g5, 4gig ECC ram, Geforce 6600 256mb
Home: Dual 1.25ghz g4, 2gig Non-ECC ram, Radeon 9800 pro 256mb

[(gra-ph!c-D'sig-nah)]

At home I have a G4 with I think 1G of ram. I increased the RAM awhile back, and put in another drive, because the thing was so bloody slow (especially when working in Flash or Dreamweaver). It seemed to speed it up at first and now it's the same old thing – very slow....

so anyways, I'm thinking of getting one of those new 24" imacs.
MY QUESTION:
Are these imacs anywhere near as quick as the Dual Processor G5s?

I have that new 24" imac and it is fast but does not like hard core workings of the Adobe CS2 products. The software will work and work great until you are working with heavy files and many layers. I use my easily upgraded pc for such hard core use. Flash, dreamweaver, etc...work supper deee duper...

[budafist]

ALERT! VIRUS WARNING FOR ALL COMPUTERS

There is a dangerous virus being passed around electronically, orally, and by hand.
This virus is called Worm-Overload-Recreational-Killer (WORK).
If you receive WORK from any of your colleagues, your boss, or anyone else via any means DO NOT TOUCH IT. This virus will wipe out your private life completely.

If you should come into contact with WORK, take two good friends to the nearest grocery store. Purchase the antidote known as Work-Isolating-Neutralizer-Extract (WINE) or Bothersome-Employer-Elimination-Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your
system.

You should forward this warning to 5 friends. If you do not have 5 friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life.

That's great. I printed out and am passing it around the office :)

Update: I saw the printout reach my boss. Held my breath....he loved it.. Phew!

[capezio]

only work at home so I have a 17" G4 powerbook which i use all the time.
Plus I have an Intel Imac 17" with one of those dual processor thingies which I've had for 3months from brand new. It replaced an imac G3 snow which died under extended warranty and was written off. I can't use it for my work as my software needs classic and the intel imacs apparently dont support classic hence all my work is done on my laptop and classic.
The intel mac has been to be repaired already It booted up but I had no picture.

I hate computers.

[tinmanton]

I use a pc that I built. I find it practical because i can reconfigure the hard disk to have 2-3 partitions. What i did with mine was i partitioned the HDD SATA into 2 so that the 1st is for the OS (XP pro), programs (adobe CS2 and macromedia mx) and other applications are running in one partition, the second partition is the scratch disk (used by Adobe and other programs) and I have a slave IDE HDD for files. Plus i gave it a 1GB memory with a very good Nvidia video card. It actually runs faster than a mac... I'm all for those that can be configured because the system allows for flexibilty in terms of performance. The funny thing is... my processor isn't even dual core yet. I'm happy!

[PrintDriver]

I have that new 24" imac and it is fast but does not like hard core workings of the Adobe CS2 products. The software will work and work great until you are working with heavy files and many layers. I use my easily upgraded pc for such hard core use. Flash, dreamweaver, etc...work supper deee duper...

I use a G5 every day with 'hard core' large format CS2 use and the machine blows right through all the file prep I do (though I've never been a fan of the iMac all-in-ones). The problem with the new Mac OS is that everyone forgets to let the maintenance scripts run. You let your caches fill and your temp files build up and of course it gets sluggish. If you aren't leaving your Mac on and awake 24/7, figure out how to do the simple maintenance programs.

[Zantor_12]

I've got a PC, which I love, especially with my new 19'' screen. It is great for doing anything that requires detail.

["Technical" Terry]

Full-Time Work: G4 - 400MHz - 1.12GB Ram
HDD #1 - 10GB (OS and apps)
HDD #2 - 40GB (scratch disk, swap files, and client files)

Freelance Work: G5 - 2 x 2.0GHz - 2GB Ram
HDD #1 - 80GB
Partition #1 - 40GB (OS and apps)
Partition #2-5 - 10GB each (multiple user accounts)
HDD #2 - 250GB (media)
HDD #3 - 100GB firewire400 (daily backup)

Home: iBook G3 - 500MHz - 768MB Ram
HDD #1 - 40GB
Partition #1 - 10GB (OS and apps)
Partition #2 - 30GB (media)

HP Pavilion - 1.2 GHz - 1GB Ram
(lets my wife check her e-mail and I'll play a game once in a while)

[panzer]

no no no no n nooo

not the old damn pc or mac again

[mattbing]

I use a G5 every day with 'hard core' large format CS2 use and the machine blows right through all the file prep I do (though I've never been a fan of the iMac all-in-ones). The problem with the new Mac OS is that everyone forgets to let the maintenance scripts run. You let your caches fill and your temp files build up and of course it gets sluggish. If you aren't leaving your Mac on and awake 24/7, figure out how to do the simple maintenance programs.


I leave it on all the time, and occasionally run the Disk Utility Check/repair/permissions.. i sthere other thing you can use? What words should i search help for?

[mcremixdesign]

ive got an intel imac.
the whole cs2 package runs pretty smooth actually.
ive never had any problems whatsoever.

[mojoprime]

you might try getting disk warrior (www.alsoft.com) is you're having some pretty serious and regular slowdowns.

here's some more info on it. i think this is what PD was referring to and he's absolutely right, in my opinion, to stress their importance.

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintscripts.html

i also like applejack for doing this stuff, or if for some reason, you can even start up your mac:

http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

[SeanTrek]

I don't work, and at home I use PCs. I wouldn't use a Mac if it were the last computer on earth! But sadly, my school uses macs (Uses PCs in the library though)

~Sean

[Ned]

I use a Commodore 64. Photoshop runs okay, but Illustrator is really slow!! InDesign crashes frequently from lack of memory. If I want to use After Effects or Premiere, I have to borrow my buddy's 386.

[Exodus]

LOL, Ned!

If you ever need to borrow my Genesis, just let me know.

[Ned]

You bet, Exodus! Does it play games? :D

[Exodus]

Yes it does!

[Virgo Nightingale]

I used to have a Mac LCIII. I think it had like 4 mb ram, and an 80 mb hard drive. :eek: It had Photoshop on it, but it was pretty slow. I'd tell it to apply a filter, go downstairs, fix myself dinner or a sandwich, come back upstairs, and it would be almost finished processing it.

[mac.FINN]

I'm all about the etch-a-sketch!

However, I once took it on a bumpy road trip and lost all my data.

[Exodus]

Everybody has it all WRONG!!

An abacus is where its at!

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7998/abacusue6.jpg

[Ned]

I used to have a Mac LCIII. I think it had like 4 mb ram, and an 80 mb hard drive. :eek: It had Photoshop on it, but it was pretty slow. I'd tell it to apply a filter, go downstairs, fix myself dinner or a sandwich, come back upstairs, and it would be almost finished processing it.

That's the way Photoshop STILL works with the smudge tool when using it on a high-res image, on a brand-new computer. For instance, if you take an image with a non-solid background and place it over a larger, similiar background, you can remove the lines at the edges of the original image by smudging back and forth with the smudge tool. This method works beautifully, but you have to go make a cup of tea, invite some friends over, etc., then come back to see if Photoshop has finished the smudge. Very annoying when it's close to closing time, and everybody else is packing up to leave.

[Ned]

Everybody has it all WRONG!!

An abacus is where its at!


Yeah, but does it play games? :D

[Exodus]

Yeah, but does it play games? :D

That depends on what you define as games and how easily entertained you are! :D

[Ned]

That depends on what you define as games and how easily entertained you are! :D

Simple minds are easily amused...

...if that answers your question. :D

[doubting_thomas]

Home: PC about a year old. Pretty nice machine.

Work: Mac G4 (newer so it functions ok), and PC Pent D 2 Gig Ram.

All are great for what I do with them. I'd want a Mac at home, but the wife
would be a bit miffed until she used it a bit, and that could take a while.

[urstwile]

I use a G5 every day with 'hard core' large format CS2 use and the machine blows right through all the file prep I do (though I've never been a fan of the iMac all-in-ones). The problem with the new Mac OS is that everyone forgets to let the maintenance scripts run. You let your caches fill and your temp files build up and of course it gets sluggish. If you aren't leaving your Mac on and awake 24/7, figure out how to do the simple maintenance programs.
I've heard Rosetta and CS2 are a sluggish duo. I believe the 24" is Intel so it's probably Rosetta that's causing the sluggishness.

[Retsel77]

I use 20" iMac at work for design and use a built PC at home. Thinking about getting a 24" iMac for at home use.

[budafist]

I fantisise about iMacs at night :)

[hewligan]

I use a G5 every day with 'hard core' large format CS2 use and the machine blows right through all the file prep I do (though I've never been a fan of the iMac all-in-ones). The problem with the new Mac OS is that everyone forgets to let the maintenance scripts run. You let your caches fill and your temp files build up and of course it gets sluggish. If you aren't leaving your Mac on and awake 24/7, figure out how to do the simple maintenance programs.

Unless you really want to learn about anacron (actually, I do know about anacron, and I still can't be bothered with it) the best way I've found to handle that maintenance stuff is Mac Janitor:

http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html

I run it whenever the Mac starts getting sluggish, and it fixes it right up.

And I, also, fantasize about iMacs at night - but only because I've looked at the prices, and I'm pretty sure I can't even afford to fantasize about the Mac Pro's...

[Photographerguy]

Imac G5 for the office, Powerbook G4 for location shooting when tethered. Happy camper here.

I started buying the software 5 years ago. How could I possibly change and incur all the cost? Mac will be fine for me, for some time to come.

[fredrich]

3.0 GHz 2GB ram PC at home, Fujitsu Siemens laptop at the office.

[MD]

Unless you really want to learn about anacron (actually, I do know about anacron, and I still can't be bothered with it) the best way I've found to handle that maintenance stuff is Mac Janitor:

http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html

I run it whenever the Mac starts getting sluggish, and it fixes it right up.

And I, also, fantasize about iMacs at night - but only because I've looked at the prices, and I'm pretty sure I can't even afford to fantasize about the Mac Pro's...

That looks like just the program i was looking for hewligan thanks :D
The Mac Pro is only a few hundred more - I am hoping to get one on discount when the new models come out. With a couple big freelance projects that i am working on I just might be able to swing it ... I wish they would bring back a mid-range tower though, maybe something in the $1500 range.

[BJMRGTIVR6]

MD-
You can downgrade the processor but it is only down to $2121 or something like that instead of their starting $2500.

[MD]

the mac catalog sellers have it at $1999 - but only with 1gb of ram.