Posted by Jack Graham on March 31, 2009 at 11:13 PM
OK folks--heres the same old question.... but since PC's have dropped in price so much and I am not that savvy as far as buying stuff, indulge me in asking......
I have about 1200.00 to spend ( not including a monitor). This PC will only process images using CD4, LR, Silver Efex Pro and a few other programs...... anyone have thoughts? ( really don't want to go to MAC).... where to buy, what to buy? anyone buy anything recently they like?
Thanks
JG
PS_-I'd like to avoid Vista as well.
Posted by Richard Wong on April 1, 2009 at 1:09 AM
I've had good luck with the Dell's. My current one cost about $1100 a year ago. Duo Core with 4gb of RAM I believe. It works great for processing images. My previous one lasted six years.
I should add that I opted for Windows XP instead of Vista. Not sure if they are offering that option anymore though.
Jack, are you looking towards a 32 or 64 bit system?
The reason I ask is that it will be pretty tough to avoid Vista if you go 64 bit at a consumer level.
XP home editions are also not longer officially available. You can buy it still, but you will be beginning to look at a custom build.
I'd probably look at the Dell Vista business machines with an XP downgrade. Definitely don't look at the home machines since you'll get all sorts of trial crapware to go with it.
(edit: It looks like the downgrade option there will only allow a max of 2 gig of memory. Not good)
For your budget, it is really hard to go wrong nowdays.
A note on Dell customer service: If you have the option when ordering the system purchase the Pro Support option. I just had to go through an issue with my three month old system that turned out to be caused by a bad video card/driver that corrupted the OS requiring a complete reinstall of the system.
The pro support is US based people and they did all they could before telling me to reinstall Vista, this included live chats, phone conversations and remote access to the computer. They even offered to send a tech person out to my office to install the new video card and driver.
I'd take a lool at the Dell Business Outlet refurbs. I got a great deal (~50% off) on a workstation class machine and it came with three year top tier service. I had a problem with the dvd-rw and a service tech was out the next day to replace the drive at no cost. It's worth a look.
If you have legacy hardware (printers, scanners, etc) that require a particular motherboard configuration - (PCI, PCIe slots, etc) then you might want to give the custom build approach a second look. Not only will you save some $$, but you will get EXACTLY what you want/need and get (or pay for) nothing you don't need. Yes, there is a warranty issue, but after 25 years of custom building computers and selling already configured ones, the custom builts have fared better as far as reliability and user satisfaction. I started building computers back in the days of $3,000 graphics cards and $2000 hard drives for Autocad, and later for Adobe Premiere and 3D Studio, and found that it is hard to come up with an off the shelf, or even a Dell/IBM/Lenovo/Acer etc system that fits the bill and the budget as well as custom-built. Tiger Direct and Newegg both have extensive offerings for those taking that option. Make sure that you spend your $$ on your monitor - since most $500 and less displays will not have enough bit-depth to properly display anything but sRGB color spaces, which would severely limit what you can see while editing in larger color spaces.
-- Get Vista 64 bit : Vista because it's mature enough that the only drawback over XP is that it's a bit more of a memory hog. Otherwise, there's no reason not to use Vista, and many people - including pro photographers - use it with zero problems. (One caveat - some old devices, particularly Nikon scanners it seems, aren't supported. So that could be an issue. 99% of devices are supported though.) And get 64-bit because you're going to want more than 4 GB of memory at some point, and you'll need 64-bit for that.
-- Get a good memory card : CS4 will take advantage of it (previous versions of PS wouldn't have)
-- Get at least 4 GB of RAM
-- Get a quad core processor. Lightroom will make good use of more cores (PS, not so much I've heard).
Posted by Lance Warley on April 1, 2009 at 10:17 AM
I suggest that you have a hardware RAID1 installed. RAID1 uses two identical drives. Data is written to both drives simultaneously providing a mirror image of the data on Drive1. The advantage is that if one drive crashes, the other drive will be intact.
Just shoot Jpegs and use elements 2.0 and you won't need a powerful computer
Posted by Dan Borzynski on April 1, 2009 at 10:34 PM
Or something called "film". I've heard about this wet darkroom stuff. Sounds interesting. It could the wave of the future and maybe even take a bite of sales from digital cameras.
I'd suggest building your own through either New Egg or Tiger Direct. It'll save you some money and you get exactly what you want. Plus it's super easy to do.
Hi Jack: what Garth says. I'm fortunate to have experienced computer nerds as friends, so they picked my components and built my system based upon my requirements. Everything came from newegg.com. For around $1200, I got a screaming fast quad Core i7 Vista 64-bit PC. I am very happy, and performance smokes. Contact me privately if you're interested in knowing my build.
BTW, I didn't want to touch Vista either after all the early reports, but quite frankly, Vista is a very nice OS that performs flawlessly and more smartly than any previous version of Windows. Be not afraid.
I agree 64 bit is the way to go if buying/building now to get around the 4 gig memory limit. That being said I would go with vista 64 bit and not XP pro 64 bit.
When it comes to building or buying I would base that on your knowledge and comfort level. Building isn't all that much cheaper by the time you buy the software, and if you don't know what you need, and are not comfortable troubleshooting install issues it can be frustrating. Some system board installs go nice, some not so nice.
I will say one advantage of building your own machine is overclocking, but that might not be something you're interested in anyway.
Dual core or quad core is fine, a quad core really won't make that much difference on majority of applications. I'm an Intel fan, but you can save a bit with AMD and they perform.
I'm not a fan of Dell, but many do like them. HP makes some nice business class workstations as well.
You have plenty in your budget to make something nice, look around and don't be afraid to post some specs if you find something interesting.
Kevin
Posted by Drew M Wright on April 3, 2009 at 12:44 PM
Hey Jack,
After weeks of research, I just picked up a ThinkPad W500 strictly for photo editing, running all the same software mentioned above. Also purchased the basic docking station for use with an external monitor. Battery life is amazing and no problems chunking through files from a 5d2. It came pre-loaded with Vista but I purchased a downgrade to XP Pro which helped significantly with speed.
Discussion
16 repliesI have about 1200.00 to spend ( not including a monitor). This PC will only process images using CD4, LR, Silver Efex Pro and a few other programs...... anyone have thoughts? ( really don't want to go to MAC).... where to buy, what to buy? anyone buy anything recently they like?
Thanks
JG
PS_-I'd like to avoid Vista as well.
I should add that I opted for Windows XP instead of Vista. Not sure if they are offering that option anymore though.
The reason I ask is that it will be pretty tough to avoid Vista if you go 64 bit at a consumer level.
XP home editions are also not longer officially available. You can buy it still, but you will be beginning to look at a custom build.
I'd probably look at the Dell Vista business machines with an XP downgrade. Definitely don't look at the home machines since you'll get all sorts of trial crapware to go with it.
(edit: It looks like the downgrade option there will only allow a max of 2 gig of memory. Not good)
For your budget, it is really hard to go wrong nowdays.
The pro support is US based people and they did all they could before telling me to reinstall Vista, this included live chats, phone conversations and remote access to the computer. They even offered to send a tech person out to my office to install the new video card and driver.
-- Get Vista 64 bit : Vista because it's mature enough that the only drawback over XP is that it's a bit more of a memory hog. Otherwise, there's no reason not to use Vista, and many people - including pro photographers - use it with zero problems. (One caveat - some old devices, particularly Nikon scanners it seems, aren't supported. So that could be an issue. 99% of devices are supported though.) And get 64-bit because you're going to want more than 4 GB of memory at some point, and you'll need 64-bit for that.
-- Get a good memory card : CS4 will take advantage of it (previous versions of PS wouldn't have)
-- Get at least 4 GB of RAM
-- Get a quad core processor. Lightroom will make good use of more cores (PS, not so much I've heard).
I suggest that you have a hardware RAID1 installed. RAID1 uses two identical drives. Data is written to both drives simultaneously providing a mirror image of the data on Drive1. The advantage is that if one drive crashes, the other drive will be intact.
-P
BTW, I didn't want to touch Vista either after all the early reports, but quite frankly, Vista is a very nice OS that performs flawlessly and more smartly than any previous version of Windows. Be not afraid.
I agree 64 bit is the way to go if buying/building now to get around the 4 gig memory limit. That being said I would go with vista 64 bit and not XP pro 64 bit.
When it comes to building or buying I would base that on your knowledge and comfort level. Building isn't all that much cheaper by the time you buy the software, and if you don't know what you need, and are not comfortable troubleshooting install issues it can be frustrating. Some system board installs go nice, some not so nice.
I will say one advantage of building your own machine is overclocking, but that might not be something you're interested in anyway.
Dual core or quad core is fine, a quad core really won't make that much difference on majority of applications. I'm an Intel fan, but you can save a bit with AMD and they perform.
I'm not a fan of Dell, but many do like them. HP makes some nice business class workstations as well.
You have plenty in your budget to make something nice, look around and don't be afraid to post some specs if you find something interesting.
Kevin
After weeks of research, I just picked up a ThinkPad W500 strictly for photo editing, running all the same software mentioned above. Also purchased the basic docking station for use with an external monitor. Battery life is amazing and no problems chunking through files from a 5d2. It came pre-loaded with Vista but I purchased a downgrade to XP Pro which helped significantly with speed.