I use Faststone to view pictures. When I click on a picture it takes about 3 seconds to open Faststone and show the picture but going from one to the next once Faststone is open with pictures 70, 57, 20 and 76mb is instant. Opening the 76mp JPEG picture in PS2026 takes 3 seconds and about the same for a 95.9mb DNG. I'm pretty happy with the speed of my current pc but it could be faster running Denoise and doing panoramas and it's now struggling when I load a lot of raws but one thing I'm not sure of is what it's doing in the background and what effect this has on speed. Just now I've noticed that an update has been carried out without me seeing any notification at all and that is annoying. I'm sure these unseen background tasks affect speed as sometimes the pc seems to run fast and at other times it struggles. I suppose this is all part of the joy of Windows,
I'll have a think about an Apple but I don't fancy paying £3k+.
Yeah you don’t need to spend 3k. I don’t use faststone so don’t know if that is normal or not, sounds very slow.
I spent a ridiculous amount of money but if I had of been buying a windows p.c I would have spent a similar amount. I am processing a lot of images though.
When I decided to change my computer my mate kept harping on about Macs and tbh in the first instance I ignored it, called him a fan boy and was going to buy another windows p.c. Once I started looking though there hadn’t really been much of a change compared to what I already had. Windows hardware really seems to have stagnated a bit.
That got me looking at Macs again and I struggled to wrap my head around how a Mac with less ram etc. could be better than a p.c with seemingly more of everything. I did a bit of reading up and pretty much everything I read said that because the M Series processors are so ridiculously quick and because Mac’s use unified memory they would always outperform a similarly priced windows computer using creative apps anyway. Obviously Windows would be better for gaming etc.
My mate let me use his Mac Mini which wasn’t much newer than the P.C I already had, that I had paid 4k for. His Mac Mini was a lot quicker for all of the apps I use. He had paid a lot less for his Mac Mini.
Then it was just of matter of finding a spec that suited me and would give me a bit of headroom down the road.
I guess you have to just compare like for like in terms of pricing. A Mac at £1500 for creative apps is going to outperform a windows computer at £1500. A Mac at £2000 is going to outperform a windows computer at £2000 etc. There is maybe even an argument that a Mac at £1500 will outperform a windows computer at £2000 for creative apps.
Then on top of that you have a lot less hassle in terms of windows updates causing issues and all of the usual windows hassle with drivers and compatibility etc. Once you wrap your head around the O.S everything on the Mac’s seems to make more sense and feel easier. Security is a good bit better as well. While it’s no big deal really they are also a lot more power efficient, my mate kept banging on about that he is a bit of a save the planet type guy. They also run a lot quieter, as I mentioned before the noise from my old computer never bothered me until I had a Mac that was completely silent all of the time.
However that’s not to say that a Mac is the right option for you. With your only option being a laptop and you preferring a 17” screen. Everyone will want different things. Personally I would always choose a smaller higher end display with better colour accuracy over a larger display because colour accuracy etc is important to me, that does not mean you have to though.
The thing that nearly put me off using a Mac was needing external rather than internal drives. My p.c had 4 drives and I had a system tha suited me great in terms of having a drive for cache, having a drive for Lightroom etc. I was able to get around that by using extremely fast external drives and reducing it to 1 x internal and 2 external instead of the 4 I had been using as I no longer need the cache drive with the Mac being so ridiculously fast. Because the drives are Thunderbolt 5 they are a massive improvement over the internal drives I had before.
If you go for a new windows laptop you will be able to get the 17” display you want but even with it being 5 years since you got your last one which in computer terms would usually be an age you may not see a huge improvement in speed without spending a lot more money and it will still be slower and less refined than if you had got a similarly priced Mac.
At the moment for image processing and video as well to be fair Apple are the best option in terms of performance. However that doesn’t mean it’s the best option for you.
. Also, I guess it depends on the screen resolution.
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