iMac 20" for heavy tasks

[AtomicGarden]

hey guys

first of all I wanna say a big 'hi' to everyone in this community - for this is my first message
on this board.
however, here it goes: I got accepted at design university in Media Design/Graphic Design. I've
created my current portfolio on my pc notebook (2.4 ghz Intel pentium 4, 512MB ram, 64MB dedicated
graphic memory, 80GB harddrive (+80GB and 200GB external) - front side bus... no clue - I guess
around 200 or 300 for that the laptop is three years old.

I am very happy with this machine - its a great computer who did a great job once more when I depended
on it to finish my portfolio. The only bad things about it are that its running XP, is getting
somewhat slow now for my extended tasks), no firewire or PCMCIA slot and well... of course its
form factor.

so because I own an iPod for three years now (3G - one of the very,very first ;-) and got to work
on macs in my old university I decided that its time to switch. OS X, its stability, compability
especially in the design/art world and its sheer looks have convinced me long time ago. Plus
Apple is on the up again - which means I don't have to fear that there will be no more Apple
Computers a few month' from now like 1995 or so...

I currently need the computer especially for tasks in Adobe's Creative suite (mainly photoshop and
illustrator), quark xpress, dreamweaver, freehand and flash 8, sound forge 7 and vegas...

however - my later tasks will include creating pieces in Final Cut Pro, After Effects,
heavier work in photoshop etc... my photoshop documents can easily reach 150MB in size and up. I work
with resolutions of 300dpi, CMYK and over.


My requested computer power is definitly on a constant up.

Now - I love the iMac 20'. I would upgrade the RAM to 1GB on one bank and then upgrade the second
bank with an additional 1GB myself. I will definitly opp for the 256 MB Radeon and add a wireless keyboard
and mighty mouse. Do you think this configuration would suite my wishes and work tasks ? Could I
work in a mamouth programm like Final Cut Pro or a workhorse like After Effects ? How about the Rosetta
thing - applying effects in photoshop is said to be horribly slow unter the current version in photoshop -
what about that?

Money is a question too... Spending the extra chash on a ProMac is difficult for me... Plus - well
lets face it - buying a first rev computer is always somewhat dodgy..

How's your advice guys ? :)

best wishes,
-Jan

[AWR]

Welcome Jan. :)

I can not speak to the specifics about Final Cut Pro, etc.

But I can point out something that you already know (helpful as always, I am ;) ).

If two of your concerns are price and form, it hard to beat the 20" iMac. And performance wise it is no slouch, especially with 2GB RAM, etc.

You might also consider waiting a bit, if you can, because as I understand it, the iMac might be in for a speed bump with Intel's release of a new chip (which is scheduled for August, irc).

Hope you enjoy it when you get it. :)

[kgarchar]

I have 2 good friends who are freelance Graphic Designers who both got Intel Macs and have 2 gb of ram. After the ram upgrade, They both have said Photoshop and Illustrator run fine, and they also are using files between 200 and 400 MB.

[Windowsrookie]

I wish I could get a 20 foot imac. ;)

[bassplayinMacFiend]

Neither Sound Forge nor Vegas are available on OS X (both are Sony products). If that's a show stopper, then you need to know this now.

[PB PM]

Of course he can always use one of the solutions available to have Windows running on his iMac.

[AtomicGarden]

I wish I could get a 20 foot imac. ;)

20inch of course - although 20 foot would great to show off with ;-)

[AtomicGarden]

Neither Sound Forge nor Vegas are available on OS X (both are Sony products). If that's a show stopper, then you need to know this now.

I know - thats why I was asking for After Effects and Final Cut Pro... However I will keep my pc laptop - which means I can still run Vegas...

Any guess how Final Cut Pro's gonna run ???

Thanks guys,
Jan

[Dorian Gray]

Final Cut Pro will run like a dream on a Core Duo processor: it's a Universal Binary. Adobe apps on the other hand are still PPC and will run through Rosetta with seriously degraded performance. Even a single-core/processor G5 (such as the old G5 iMac) will run Photoshop faster than any current Intel Mac. With loads of memory you could probably run Photoshop adequately (perhaps a bit faster than your current laptop with its slow Pentium 4), but a dual-core G5 will smoke it. Of course, Adobe will eventually release a UB of Photoshop and the other apps, probably in a few months.

As mentioned above though, you can run Windows on Intel Macs, so that could be a get-out clause to use if you find OS X Photoshop performance intolerable until Adobe deliver the UB. (You might find the performance quite adequate depending on how anal you are about filter times, etc. In my experience it doesn't really matter whether a filter takes 10 seconds or 30 seconds, but I don't work with really large files where a 3x difference might be more significant.)

Any Universal Binary OS X app will run vastly faster on a Core-Duo Mac than the equivalent on your laptop. And the 20-inch iMac's screen is a thing of beauty!