The best off the shelf computer for a digital photographer?

[mjs1973]

What are your suggestions for the best off the shelf computer for someone who takes lots of digital photos (RAW) and is running the full version of Photoshop. It can be either a PC or a Mac, laptop or desktop.

I realize just about anything you put in this thread today will be outdated within a week, but I'm looking to see what others find important when it comes to handling a large amount of large image files.

Edit: Forgot to add a budget. Try to keep it around $1500 max.

[Medley]

Macbook Pro, as much RAM as you can afford, and the 320 GB hard drive. Parallells 3.0 and your favorite version of Windows for those Windows-only applications, and you have one powerful field notebook.

I did this a few months back for an extended Hawaiian vacation, and I'm still excited about the system. I use iPhoto to organize my images, and the comp comes with a 30-day trial of Aperture. However, the RAM is a serious consideration, as starting Windows essentially splits the available RAM between the two operating systems (under the default setup).

I've put the Adobe Creative Suite2 on the Mac side, and Paint Shop Pro X on the Windows side, and I've yet to run into anything that slows it down much, let alone stops it. I purchased the 17" verson, but if I had it to do over, I'd take a harder look at the 15", just for portability's sake.

- Joe U.

[mjs1973]

Thanks for the input. I have heard great things about the Macbook Pro line, but have never used one. My current set up is a 17" Toshiba Satelite. I love it, but the LCD screen is going out on it, so I'm going to have to replace it in the near future. I know what you mean about looking at the 15" for portability.

I'm still undecided as to which computer I want to replace. My 10 year old HP desktop, or my 2 year old Toshiba with a slowly dieing monitor...

[SmartWombat]

Budget, ouch.
I would look for widescreen (WXGA) definitely, as photo applications with the tools down the sides brings you back to about 3:2 or 4:3 in the centre of the screen.
If possible, multiple 64 bit CPU cores as that's where the future is.

More RAM than you can afford, seriously this is a big factor
If your system has all the RAM slots full, then an upgrade is going to be expensive.
If you think that you might want more RAM later then better to have half slots full with big chips than all slots full with cheaper, smaller chips.
We ran into that on our servers and it cost us a LOT to upgrade. So much that we could buy a new 4-core blade with 32G of RAM cheaper than upgrading 16G to 32G.

Fast external interfaces.
Get the fastest ethernet and wireless that you can, 1G and MIMO.
Even if you don't have that on any other systems yet, I'd start the upgrade.
Think about using your internal HD as working disk and buy a fast external drive for storage - that gets you a backup while on the road if it works with your laptop and your desktop, also a faster transfer form one to the other than networking. ESATA was the trend last time I looked, but I bet it's out of date now.

[mjs1973]

Thanks for the input PAul.

The wife and I were at walmart tonight and I saw this PC that looked like it would meet my needs. Any thoughts on this?

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...Specifications

[SmartWombat]

Only a few thoughts:

Vista !
oh crap.
My main programs like Lightroom and Thumbs+ were not Vista compatible - check your software very carefully to see if it really works not just claims to run and screws up.
You might find you need upgrades, and if they're not free factor that into the cost.

Only 2.6GHz ?
My machine is 3.4 GHz and it is slow running lightroom.

500GB all your eggs in one basket?
From a recovery/backup point of view I'd prefer two 250G system on C: and data on D:

DDR2 is good and fast, my PC doesn't have DDR2 - slow memory = slow computer

3G expand up to 8G
sounds like a good thing, but will upgrading to 4G fill the slots?
if so then going to 8G means maybe throwing away 3G and buying 8G more.

Only 10/100 etherenet ?
Cheapskates ! 1G is cheap to add though if you want to go fast.

PROPRIETARY portable HD ?
isn't a feature to me unless that drive also connects to my laptop.

[mjs1973]

Thanks once again for your Thoughts PAul.

How can I tell how much Video RAM I have on my machine? I'm thinking of upgrading to CS3-Extended, but the system requirements say I need at least 64MB of video RAM.

[SmartWombat]

As I thought, it's a cheap motherboard graphics chipset that uses system RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430
* Uses up to 256MB of PC memory (with 512MB or more total PC memory)
* Also supports PCI Express x16 graphics cards*
NOTE: *Either integrated graphics or the PCI Express x16 slot are usable at one time; they are not usable concurrently.
The good news is that it's upgradeable to bigger, faster graphics cards. Like ones that support multiple monitors, have high speed co-processors and lots of onboard RAM directly connected to the GPU instead of going via the system bus and competing with the CPU access.


The RAM of 3G will probably be 3x1G:
Four 240-pin DDR2 DIMM sockets
# Supports 2GB DDR2 DIMMs
# Supports up to 8 GB on 64 bit PCs

[masdog]

Depends on what you need. Do you want to be portable, or do you want more power for a lower price? You can get a good deal on both depending on what you're looking for.

If you want a laptop, I would look at a Thinkpad. They're probably some of the best machines on the market. Macbook Pros are also good. Two things, though - if you get a laptop, make sure you get the extended warranty and if you want to upgrade your RAM, go thru a third party seller like Crucial where you can get memory for half the price of the OEM.

If you want a desktop, I would recommend building your own system or going to a company that custom builds the machines.

[mjs1973]

if you get a laptop, make sure you get the extended warranty

I wish I would have did that when I bought mine 2 years ago. If I had, I would be getting it fixed, and wouldn't have to think of getting a new one.

[readingr]

Michael,

Going through this now as you might be aware. For me I have a cheap laptop which is ok for backing up photos in the field but I never use it for editing just for backups.

I use a desktop for all my editing because I like seeing things big.

Other than that Paul has nailed most things. My machine that is being spec'd will be massive and over spec'd for the immediate future but should last several years not like a laptop which I expect to live for 2/3 years max.

Just decided that my new machine will be ordered this weekend once I have an answer on the whether the RAID 0 can be turned off.

Roger