Mac or Windows??

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David Sheridan

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David Sheridan
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I have recently started to get into photography and getting to the stage where I am needing to use Photoshop on a regular basis! I have access to a mac but need to sort myself out with my own desktop! What would people recommend?
 
Macs are pretty, PCs are cheaper.

They both do the same thing but what you're actually using is Photoshop - makes no difference what machine it's on.
 
What Richard said.

If you're going for a Windows machine, don't expect to pay £300 and get leading edge performance. For a decentish machine, you're probably looking at £600 minimum with a second generation i5/i7 (i5-2500 or better i7-2600, but that will cost more), 4Gb minimum memory, Win 7 64bit. Don't forget to allow some room in the budget for a decent monitor (IPS panel is preferred - Dell do some good ones).

BTW, the Mac/PC debate can be a heated one.... ;)
 
If it helps, I recently got an Acer 5742 laptop from Tescos for £400 (i5, 5gb, 500gb) and a Dell 23in U2311H IPS monitor from Amazon for £220 and it runs Lightroom fast as you like. Back up is a WD 1gb drive.

They sit side by side and the laptop monitor works as a second screen for non image critical stuff. Well pleased for the money :)
 
Bit like asking Nikon or Canon!!!

I am a Mac fan. I use PCs at work too and know which one I prefer. Macs just work better and unless you are an IT geek who loves playing with settings and upgrading then go for Mac. More reliable, easier to use, look great too!
 
I am NOT about to enter into a PC/Mac debate as it's been done to death and is akin to a religious war but (there always is a but isn't there). I did snigger a bit at this quote from the following article at the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14587426

BBC's Tim Webber said:
But the industry's profit margins are razor-thin; it's the result of technology commoditisation, where there is not much left to distinguish one PC from another. Only Apple has a brand that consumers perceive as so desirable that they are happy to pay a hefty premium for what in the end are perfectly ordinary computers.
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Posted for humour rather than argument :)
 
The23rdman said:
yawn indeed.
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The OP asked what I would recommend - as someone who uses both Macs and PCs, Macs do work better for what I do. Fail to see how I can recommend without giving some reasons, this is one of them.

I dont need to reboot as frequently, programs crash more times in 1 month in Windows than they do all year on the Mac. I also have a work Android and personal iPhone and find the same here - things are just easier on the iphone, they just work. Personal opinion though.
 
cant believe i have to type this out again..

as someone that supports both platforms (argh someone shoot me for occupation dropping), they both have pros and cons, software wise theyre both as reliable as each other (SN compared to W7-64), hardware wise itll vary if you dont spend as much on the PC hardware as you would with mac. otherwise they do EXACTLY the same thing but in a different interface, neither is "better" in anything other than a personal feel aspect.

/thread.

(can you tell its my first day back at work in a week by the rant? :lol:)
 
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From my experience Mac's are bad for your health, my stress levels go through the roof when I use mine. I hate the thing. Never had half as many problems using windows. But that's just my experience, in reality it doesn't matter what you go with, the computer will always have the last laugh anyway, usually at your expense.
 
There's very little difference between Windows 7 and OSX. They both run Photoshop/Lightroom, Ms Office, and your web browser of choice, which is all most people ever need.

I need XCode and Visual Studio so I dual boot and honestly don't really care which environment I'm in, although I default to Windows because I don't the ugly font smoothing in OSX.
 
Buy a Mac, and install parallel platform to run windows also....best of both worlds.

Mac OS is very intuitive to me, things like syncing mail/calender/contacts extremely simply with my other apple products is a bonus. They're just easy....they're expensive, but they're well built, reliable, and from my own personal experience, don't slow down over time like PCs seem to. I'm not a computer buff, I can't be arsed to clear this memory, upgrade this hardware, blah blah blah, the Mac does just work. Yawn, but true.
 
sorry but they do slow down over time, i wish they didnt believe me it'd take some workload off having to rebuild them. fact is the drag to trash method of "uninstalling" is horribly unefficient.
 
neil_g said:
sorry but they do slow down over time, i wish they didnt believe me it'd take some workload off having to rebuild them. fact is the drag to trash method of "uninstalling" is horribly unefficient.
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...but at least you know it's not going to leave all manner of crap in the system registry or scattered across the hard disk in too many different places... I know an uninstaller should take care of all that, but the fact is, often, they don't...

Personally speaking, I'd rather drag to the trash bin than have to go into the control panel, select 'Remove Programs' (or whatever it is these days!) and wait for the system to clean itself up afterwards...
 
Catdaddy said:
...but at least you know it's not going to leave all manner of crap in the system registry or scattered across the hard disk in too many different places... I know an uninstaller should take care of all that, but the fact is, often, they don't...

Personally speaking, I'd rather drag to the trash bin than have to go into the control panel, select 'Remove Programs' (or whatever it is these days!) and wait for the system to clean itself up afterwards...
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Dragging to trash leaves alsorts behind.. Believe me.
 
How many more times? It doesn't matter these days. Go with what you already know - unless it's Linux, then god help you when it comes to photography (and yes I run Linux as well)
 
I'm surprised the forum doesn't have a set of rules governing the preaching of differing religions... ;)
 
If you can wait a little bit, wait for the announcement of Digic V processor, it will certainly reduce the cost of Digic IV.

Seriously though, go for PC with Windows 7.

Before Windows 7 was released I had a lot of friends asking me to fix their computers/laptops. After Windows 7 was released, I don't have friends anymore.
 
I also use Macs and PCs at work, for both graphic design and photographic work. I used a Mac when the Macs had a higher spec, I'm back to PCs mostly now that they've been upgraded to i7s. Macs look really good, PCs are more cost effective but neither is "better" for photography. If you look for a minimum of an i5 whether it's an iMac or Mac Pro / PC with a decent monitor, you'll be fine.
 
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