URGENT response please: PC choice

[SmartWombat]

Lightroom and PS CS2 are not Vista certified, I think.
It's enough to drive a man to Mac (shudder)

Although Leopard has its own issues, mainly with (non) printing and drivers.
It's getting more Windows like with time



I would go quad core, because future aplications will be multithreaded and take advantage of it, if today's don't already.

Don't use motherboard graphics, get a cheap graphics card that has its own GPU and RAM. Otherwise the main CPU(s) and the GPU will be competing for the system bus.


FWIW my system was killed by heat and I downloaded a great tool called DTEMP that monitors the hard disk SMART parameters and tells you how hot it is. Very useful to see if your system is cooking the drives into an early grave.
Manufacturers are building systems cheaply, with fan holes in the case but no fans fitted in some cases. It may be as simple as adding an extra fan to move the air through the box. That saved my system after replacing the SATA drives.

[readingr]

Lightroom and PS CS2 are not Vista certified, I think.
It's enough to drive a man to Mac (shudder)

Although Leopard has its own issues, mainly with (non) printing and drivers.
It's getting more Windows like with time



I would go quad core, because future aplications will be multithreaded and take advantage of it, if today's don't already.

Don't use motherboard graphics, get a cheap graphics card that has its own GPU and RAM. Otherwise the main CPU(s) and the GPU will be competing for the system bus.


FWIW my system was killed by heat and I downloaded a great tool called DTEMP that monitors the hard disk SMART parameters and tells you how hot it is. Very useful to see if your system is cooking the drives into an early grave.
Manufacturers are building systems cheaply, with fan holes in the case but no fans fitted in some cases. It may be as simple as adding an extra fan to move the air through the box. That saved my system after replacing the SATA drives.

Paul,

I've read that CS2 works fine with Vista once you get it installed which means it has to have admin rights to get it working. From then on its fine.

The Graphics card choosen is a separate from the motherboard, but good advice on the fans.

Downloaded DTEMP and one disc is at 37 and the other at 33 and its not picking up temp from the third.

Roger