My old machine works, but can be slow sometimes with CS1. It's specs are an embarrasment:
- 2.8 GHz processor; not too bad, works well most of the time. This is an upgrade from the original 1.8 GHz
- 60 GB hard drive. Was originally 30, then I bolted another on.
- USB 1.1 x 2. I also added 2 USB 2.0 slots to speed things up on memory card transfer
- RAM: just over 1GB, upgraded from a paultry (though spec-leading in 2001) 250Mb.
- Optical drives; 1 DVD ROM drive; 1 CD-R drive.
I am currently looking at a Dell; specs below:
Any thoughts you have on this would be much appreciated...
Hope you have a great Christmas and New Year, and we can all see lots of new shots come January!! We need to beat last years posting total. If we all posted once per week, that would be 6 a week, and over 300 for the year!
Cheers
Ivan
5 comments:
Hi Ivan,
Don't fall off your seat - a DXBluey comment...
The specs looks good to me, no expert by any means, photoshop and photography in general arn't too bad on the processing generally unless doing batch work I'd assume.
The one thing I'd suggest upgrading is easy, the monitor size. I've got a 22 inch HP widescreen (HP2207) and it really is the business.
I'm inching closer to the big day, hopefully end of Jan where I think I'll be buying either a Canon 40D, a Nikon D80 though I may stretch to a Sony Alpha 700...
Hope all great with you all.
I'm getting more in the frame of mind to do more photograph soon...!
Cheers,
Bluey!
Right at the end of the year a comment from Bluey! Wow, the Miracle of Christmas right enough..!
Good comment - agree about the monitor; I'd love a 2 screen set up, one for the whole image, one to have a close-in view, or just several things open at once!
I guess I'd also add in a back-up hard drive too.
Good to hear from you, and a package arrived last week from Dubai (we think). If it was you guys, ta very much!! If not, who else do we know in Dubai???!
Have a great one
Ivan
Not from us, Santa must have routed it through DXB... :)
Multi-monitor is the future - I agree. You want to see different things at the same time in different ways...
Hi Guys,
OK, I did this one just about 12 months ago but I think what I learned is still valid (although the clock speeds have increased by 50% in the twelve months since).
Looking at your machine specs:
CPU: Core2Duo - definitely the way to go. My 1.86Ghz Core2Duo rarely gets maxed out even when I'm hammering photoshop or lightroom, so I'd get the slowest or second-slowest clock speed you can. Not really worth paying huge amounts for more GHz - it's the Core2 bit which makes the difference.
o/s: I run Vista Ultimate and have had few problems with it but there are PLENTY of people out there who reckon than XP runs more quickly and reliably on a given bit of hardware than Vista does! I reckon if I were you I'd probably stick with Vista but you might want to consider buying it, wiping it and sticking XP on there.
Monitors: this is the biggest single piece of advice that I can give you on this whole spec - get a 20" or 21" monitor if you can possibly afford it. Go for a slower CPU if you have to but get a bigger screen. The reason is that 19" have the same native resolution as 17" monitors - 1280x1024. In fact, I've just noticed that you've listed the widescreen version which does 1440x900 which is 10% fewer pixels vertically than that. Get a 4x3 monitor, not a widescreen one point one, and get a 20" one because it'll do 1600x1200 and it just makes so much difference to photo work. I'd even go so far as to say that for photography work, a big single monitor is worth more to you than two smaller screens.
Video card: yep, looks fine.
Memory: I have 2GB and it's not quite enough so at least 3 is the way to go. Maybe buy it with 2GB and look at 3rd party RAM though to see if it's cheaper - don't get 3GB as 2x1 and 2x512 though because you'll end up throwing away the 2x512 to go from 3 to 4 at some point - you might as well start with 4x1 and be done with it!
Hard drives: I read somewhere that the optimimal photoshop and windows combination is to have two hard drives. You put Windows and the applications on the first. You put the Windows swap file and your data on the second. You put the Photoshop swap file on the first - i.e. you have the two swap files on different disks. This is the configuration that I have. I can't say that I see much difference! However, it makes sense to have your data and your apps/o/s on a different hard drive because if you need to wipe and reinstall the o/s you can leave your data alone on the second drive, plus if you run out of space on your data drive and need to replace it you can do so without touching the o/s?
Hope this is all useful. Have a fantastic Christmas.
All the best to all of you,
Gareth
G
I hoped you'd reply, being the one "in the business"...
Good comments - thanks! I think I need to speak to you in the New Year, as your comments make perfect sense, and things I would never have thought about.
Likewise, have a great time over the break. Back on the 2nd Jan?
See you on 7th and 8th.
Cheers
Ivan
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