[Leica] glossy screen iMac problems

[mark.teampope at ntlworld.com (Mark Pope)]

I saw a 24" Imac last Thursday in a local store.  It looked very nice 
and was definitely preferable to the 20" machine next to it.

Then I put my "practical head" on...The main thing that bothered me was 
the fact it "only" has the one hard drive, which by today's standards is 
actually quite small.  Assuming you want to run Photoshop, whilst it 
runs well with a single disk, there is a performance gain to be had by 
running two disks and having the swap disk on a physically different 
drive to the application and files.  Or at least it USED to be the case, 
at least on PCs.  I'm not sure whether this is an issue with Macs.

 From a purely value for money point of view, I wonder whether the Mac 
mini and a  monitor such as the Apple cinema LCD (total cost about 
$1500)  would be a better bet than the 24" Imac at $1800?  Anyone have 
any thoughts?

Finally, on a practical note, given the limited HDD space on either the 
IMAC or MAC mini, I would imagine that many people would be forced into 
using external HDDs to make up the shortfall as well as for backups.  I 
can envisage a situation where there is this beautifully engineered 
Apple objet with a bunch of cables running to various HDDs stacked 
elsewhere on the desk.  It makes me wonder whether for photography, 
we're better off with the more traditional form factor of the tower PC.  
Problem is, the mac pro is a very costly piece of kit.

Sorry if has come across as anti-Mac.  It isn't meant to.  It certainly 
is beautiful kit and from what I have seen of the operating system and 
application software, it is very good indeed,

As someone who may be investing in a MAC book/pc when my existing 
hardware gives up the ghost, I would be very interested to hear other 
people's views.

Cheers


Mark


Daniel Ridings wrote:
> Yeah, I've been a little sceptical about how much they charge for
> 360gb instead of 250gb disk and extra gigabytes of internal memory.
> Their extra charges seem to be extremely inflated.
>
> I guess I'll take a look at the 24" screen. I know where I can look at
> the two sizes side by side.
>
> Daniel
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Steve Unsworth
> <lug@steveunsworth.co.uk> wrote:
>   
>> The screen on the 24" is supposed to be better than the smaller screens.
>>
>> Don't buy the extra memory from Apple, their prices are very high. I 
>> bought
>> from a 3rd party in the UK. Even though I had to ditch the 2 gig that the
>> iMac came with it still worked out cheaper than buying the machine with 4
>> gig from Apple.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> On 18/10/08 20:29, "Daniel Ridings" <dlridings@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> I looked at a 20" iMac today (they didn't have a 24" on display).
>>>
>>> Thanks. You do a lot of b/w too. I'm waiting to see what Arche finally
>>> pins down.
>>>
>>> The 20" iMac was very reasonable, pricewise. It would need more
>>> internal memory, but that's not an arm and a leg.
>>>
>>> Daniel
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Steve Unsworth
>>> <lug@steveunsworth.co.uk> wrote:
>>>       
>>>> The window's Vuescan serial number will work ok with the iMac, and I 
>>>> use it
>>>> with a Nikon Coolscan V. I swapped to a 24" iMac a few months ago, wish 
>>>> I'd
>>>> done it earlier.
>>>>
>>>> Steve
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 17/10/08 18:14, "Daniel Ridings" <dlridings@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> Since Lightroom came with both a Mac and a PC version, it's fairly
>>>>> undramatic to make the change. I'll have to check out Vuescan first,
>>>>> but I can't image there should be any problems. At one time the Nikon
>>>>> Coolscans were giving headaches, but I think we're talking about years
>>>>> ago.
>>>>>           
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Leica Users Group.
>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>>
>>     
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>   

-- 



Mark Pope,
Swindon, Wilts
UK

Homepage               http://www.monomagic.co.uk
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