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OldPaint
New Member
i have owned PC's only since 1993. i remember DOS 5.0. yes back then,a lot of things was "hands on" to make a PC work properly. a lot of the so called "crashes" are caused by conflicts of other programs with the O/S. since win98SE, i have not had many problems of "crashes." not loading WIN ME, was a smart thing to do. then XP which i still run without problems........never moving to VISTA!!!!! that also saved me a lot of problems. the one thing i really hate seeing on a PC when someone tells me its not working right..........
AOL.........this can do more damage then a Sylvester Stallone movie!!!!!!! next is NORTON............ without these 2 most PC's function without fail.
ALSO.......i print this ans stick it on a computer i worked on........95% OF COMPUTER PROBLEMS ARE..........OPERATOR ERROR!!!!!!!!!
AOL.........this can do more damage then a Sylvester Stallone movie!!!!!!! next is NORTON............ without these 2 most PC's function without fail.
ALSO.......i print this ans stick it on a computer i worked on........95% OF COMPUTER PROBLEMS ARE..........OPERATOR ERROR!!!!!!!!!
J
john1
Guest
You have all brought to attention some very valid points.
T3, So pretty much running Parallels on the Mac due to some software not being made for Mac doesn't run as good as it should? I have heard good things about doing things that way so it's nice to hear another side.
I have a very close friend and business i work with who is switching as we speak. He has a wide format water based printing shop and numerous digital printing presses. He has always did some things on PC and design on Mac but has just bought a new iMac to make the complete switch. This thread was to gain knowledge to help him and possibly switch myself to Mac as well.
With the Barclay's card from Apple, It really helps out people who want to use Apple products without all the money up front.
Thank you all!
T3, So pretty much running Parallels on the Mac due to some software not being made for Mac doesn't run as good as it should? I have heard good things about doing things that way so it's nice to hear another side.
I have a very close friend and business i work with who is switching as we speak. He has a wide format water based printing shop and numerous digital printing presses. He has always did some things on PC and design on Mac but has just bought a new iMac to make the complete switch. This thread was to gain knowledge to help him and possibly switch myself to Mac as well.
With the Barclay's card from Apple, It really helps out people who want to use Apple products without all the money up front.
Thank you all!
Tim Aucoin
New Member
When I ran Parallels with just the ONE program... okay, even TWO, it worked okay. When I was running 3 or more simultaneously, that's when I started having issues. Parallels was a pain in the butt with memory allocation, virtual drives, and other little nit-picky stuff. I quite often found myself re-booting Parallels on a daily basis. Too much of a pain! It wasn't from lack of Mac power, as I am running a pretty high end MacPro with 16GB of RAM. There just always seemed to be something! I ran XP with parallels at the time, and today I run Windows 7 on the PC I have. For the cost of a decent PC running Windows 7, it wasn't worth the headaches!
I'm sure that they are always improving on the (Parallels & Fusion) software, so you never know how well it may work down the road. I still do 99% of any design/layout on the Mac and I have "hot folders" set up to simply drop files into the appropriate RIPs. The other nice thing about my set up that I like is the fact that I don't have all of my "eggs" in one basket. If something goes wrong with a hard drive (and it has, believe me), I don't lose EVERYTHING!! The Mac backs up to my Drobo and the PC is hooked up to a "My Book" 2TB hard drive and backs up daily also.
If you do most of your design/layout on the iMac except for maybe some CorelDraw stuff, then you don't need the BEST PC out there to run your PC RIP devices. I think I paid around $600 or so for the PC I have. It has Windows 7 Professional 64bit, Intel Core 2 Quad CPU @ 2.66GHz, 4GB RAM. I supplied the keyboard and stuff. Not a huge investment at all!
Mainframe
New Member
Just to add to my first post, I only use 1 program with parallels so I don't know how it works with multiple programs, They are constantly upgrading the program so maybe it works well now. I only need it for versaworks & really have not had any trouble as of yet so good luck.
As the Mac market share expands so will the software offerings, but it will be some time I think.
As the Mac market share expands so will the software offerings, but it will be some time I think.
petesign
New Member
^^^ I have something nearly identical. I run a KVM switch on my desk, and leave that computer on all the time. (i dont think it has been rebooted in 6 months. It does NOTHING but rip, print and cut; and store files. I have it on a gigabit router connected to my design station, so it isn't on the internet, either. Funny, it is still as fast as when we set it up..
Tim Aucoin
New Member
Yep! I do find with the PC, if you don't do any web browsing, e-mail or install/uninstall of a bunch of stuff, it works very well and rarely needs to be restarted! My Windows 7 workstation is still very fast, and still very reliable. I don't even need to run anti-virus software, as nothing get's downloaded to it. Any software updates get downloaded on the Mac and transferred over to the PC via the network!
Joe Diaz
New Member
Honestly this is not a knock against Mac, however I have to question the reasoning for getting a system that either can't run all your software, or requires a second OS to run all your software. I would imagine switching between OSs to do work would be a real pain. Why not just get a system that has the ability to run all of your favorite brands of software, without switching from one OS to another.
At our shop everything we need runs on Windows. Some of the major brands of software we use are windows only. It sounds like in your case you have several Windows only programs too. So, the real question I would ask is, are there any Apple only software that you can't live/do work without? If not, why not go to all PC since that would be most compatible with your setup?
Again I'm not knocking Apple, but you yourself expressed concerns about using your Windows only software, so I had ask.
At our shop everything we need runs on Windows. Some of the major brands of software we use are windows only. It sounds like in your case you have several Windows only programs too. So, the real question I would ask is, are there any Apple only software that you can't live/do work without? If not, why not go to all PC since that would be most compatible with your setup?
Again I'm not knocking Apple, but you yourself expressed concerns about using your Windows only software, so I had ask.
HulkSmash
New Member
The Vector Doctor
Chief Bezier Manipulator
Agreed, I am pro-apple but would not recommend making such a wholesale change to your software and workflow. As mentioned before, do both if you must go Mac
J
john1
Guest
Thanks again guys!
After hanging around a friends shop for a hour or so who is doing the same thing, i now see how much of a pain in the neck this is going to be.
I am going to get a custom PC built this week and run dual displays possibly. I figure with only $1500 max i can build a monster machine AND get the two displays. With the Mac set up i was looking at easily $2500 with only 1 display.
Thank you all for your comments and saving me a few grand!
After hanging around a friends shop for a hour or so who is doing the same thing, i now see how much of a pain in the neck this is going to be.
I am going to get a custom PC built this week and run dual displays possibly. I figure with only $1500 max i can build a monster machine AND get the two displays. With the Mac set up i was looking at easily $2500 with only 1 display.
Thank you all for your comments and saving me a few grand!
J
john1
Guest
Well,I have my custom PC being built as we speak right now. Local Tigerdirect/CompUSA is doing the work and it should be VERY fast for just about anything. Picking it up tomorrow night 
Cooler Master 922M case
27" AOC LCD Monitor 1920x1080
Windows 7 Professional
Intel Quad Core i7-2600k 3.4GHZ
PNY 16GB DDR3 1600MHZ Ram
GeForce GTX 560 TI DDR5 1GB Video Card
Asus P8P67 Pro Rev Motherboard
Ultra MD2 SD Card Reader
LG 24x DVDRW SATA
Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB 64MB SATA Hard Drive
Thermaltake TR2 800 Watt Power Supply
Priced just right, Under $1900
I can't wait to hook it up!
Cooler Master 922M case
27" AOC LCD Monitor 1920x1080
Windows 7 Professional
Intel Quad Core i7-2600k 3.4GHZ
PNY 16GB DDR3 1600MHZ Ram
GeForce GTX 560 TI DDR5 1GB Video Card
Asus P8P67 Pro Rev Motherboard
Ultra MD2 SD Card Reader
LG 24x DVDRW SATA
Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB 64MB SATA Hard Drive
Thermaltake TR2 800 Watt Power Supply
Priced just right, Under $1900
I can't wait to hook it up!
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
Is the i7 hyperthreaded? Any overclocking? Water or air cooled?
J
john1
Guest
Looks like we've lost another one to the Geek Side.
For the money, I simply can't believe i was going to buy a Apple computer now. I mean i would have loved to but it wouldn't have had half the power of my custom PC and i would have all these headaches since i had to install windows on the Apple anyway.
The i7 2600k is a quad core 3.4Ghz with hyper-threading technology. Here is the specs on it http://ark.intel.com/products/52214/Intel-Core-i7-2600K-Processor-(8M-Cache-3_40-GHz)