[steve77uk]

Hello

I hope you may be able to help me, although I am aware that this is a Purchasing Advice AND a Genius Thread too...

The situation is, the company I work for provides Microsoft solutions, i.e. Small Business and Windows Servers to businesses in the UK, we have been asked by one of our clients to purchase an Apple Mac - which I am fortunate to see through!

Me personally, I have got a Rev B iMac G5 and also a Black MacBook which I am more than happy with, but these are used in the home environment…

The customer is having someone joining their workforce to do their design and marketing material – the new starter has requested a Macintosh to do design work so will be using the following applications:

Adobe Creative Suite 2
Macromedia Studio MX 2004
Toast
Extensis Suitcase
Office 2004.

The actual hardware has been requested as:

Mac
Flat screen monitor (the bigger the better)
1.5Gb Memory
Printer scanner etc etc etc and an external hard disk...

Obviously the PowerMac G5 is I presume the best option, which we would obviously have to buy a separate TFT monitor. I know the G5 has the ability to have a very large monitor attached or two if required and also has the option to expand the HDD if required at a later date.

However, going down the G5 route, it is obvious that in a couple of weeks / months time, the Intel version will be out. This would then provide dual booting if required to enable the use of Windows XP. Remember this computer will become part of the domain especially in XP mode. (The other question was in Mac mode, do they actually join the domain or just sit on it and use connect to server etc…)

But then again, if I wait for the Intel “G5” / PowerMac, Adobe, I have heard runs quite slow and would have to wait a while for the universal of CS3 to come out…

To be honest, I am wondering if an Intel iMac would do the job just fine, internal storage would be good - 250GB, the graphics card does 128MB (I think) and can have another monitor these days that is not mirrored. This would be the cheaper alternative (cost effective). I am just wondering if the difference between a good iMac and G5/PowerMac would be overkill…

I mean at the end of the day, the iMac is / was the equivalent of the first PowerPC G5’s not so long ago which is what the professionals use…

Any prompt advice would be appreciated. I am just not use to Macs in a corporate environment (running on a Windows Server Domain environment).

Thanks in advance and appreciate the help!

[chucker]

Yes indeed; when starting to read your post, my first thought was "why not an iMac?"

There is one problem, however: most of the software you list isn't universal yet. It won't matter much with Office 2004 (I've been using Excel a lot, and it doesn't really feel slow to the point of being annoying), but with CS2, it will. I suppose you could always run that stuff through Parallels with Windows XP, which will feel a lot faster.

[steve77uk]

I have just spoken to someone at an Apple Reseller that is local to me who recommends:

PowerPC G5 Dual 2GB
2GB RAM Min
250GB or 500GB HDD
128MB Graphics 6600

He said basically if your going to use "Pro" apps you should go for a "Pro" machine... if they want portable the MacBook Pro would be good, however, CS2 is not universal which is a pain when rendering images etc etc etc (out of my league type stuff)

I agree about the CS2, that is going to give me a bit of a headache, but then again will there be an upgrade path from PowerPC CS2 to Universal CS3...? the only problem being it is a new and different version (of sorts) so that might be expensive too... I am just concious that purchasing one, probably in July, in August, if our predictions are correct, it's seems it would be daft getting one now as it would be replaced with Intel which would be the way forward...