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General discussion

help with G4 specs please

May 10, 2004 5:17AM PDT

Im a traditional/digital illustrator/graphic designer and Im in the market for a new computer. Almost decided on a Powerbook 1.5gig/G4 17". There are some upgrades and Im thinking of going with those as well. Just wondering what specs I might need. I work with photoshop, illustrator, streamline, in design, and dream weaver. I work with large files and need speed. also, I'm curious about fire wire (its need, and use) and Bluetooth (its need, and use).

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Re:help with G4 specs please
May 10, 2004 7:36AM PDT

I visited an Apple store and didn't see the firewire as optional. Bluetooth is the chicken and egg problem. What do you have with Bluetooth?

In closing, speed is still dominated by the desktop models. Just try it.

Bob

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Re:Re:help with G4 specs please
May 11, 2004 4:52AM PDT

Yeah unfortunately I really need portability too, will be doing a lot of traveling in near future. I dont have anything yet with blue tooth, but I will need to purchase a printer and scanner(the ones I have now are old), does bluetooth work well, or is it glitchy. Firewire is not optional it comes already installed in the system, a 400 and 800 spd port. So my ?'s are: should I buy a printer and scanner with bluetooth, are they worth the extra $$, and would I really need to upgrade my ram to 2 gigs? or will 512 suit me very well? also does any one know whether ram can be upgraded after you purchase at a later date. If so is that a huge headache?

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Re:Re:Re:help with G4 specs please
May 19, 2004 2:54AM PDT

I see I showed up just in time. =) For the software you mentioned, the 1.5Ghz Powerbook will do well, just don't expect to run them all at the same time. I bought the 1.33/17" 2 months ago (with assurance that there wasn't a likely PowerBook upgrade until at least the fall.... thanks guys!) and love it intensely. By comparison, I work on dual 1.25 G4's at work, and don't notice much difference. Of course, at work I'm slowed down by the speed of the network. (I do different things at work and at home as well. Work is at a commercial print shop, and home is primarily video editing, with DTP mixed in.)

-As a side note, we also have a dual 2ghz Dell, and it is a complete dog at all tasks put to it... - (Oh, I'm gonna catch flack for that completely true statement!)

Here are my recommendations: Go with the PowerBook, so you have your mobility (I took mine to Italy, and it was great having it there). Get as much RAM as you can afford as there is no such thing as too much. (Mr Proffitt will disagree, but he's not a Mac guy, nor in "our" line of business.) If you have the option, get the faster hard drive. BlueTooth & FireWire are built in, so you will have them. BlueTooth is a wireless replacement for USB for devices like mice, keyboards and PDAs, and I love my BlueTooth mouse! FireWire is a high-speed wired connection for connecting to high performance devices, like video cameras and hard drives as well as the iPod. Back in the day, Macs had SCSI, and FireWire pretty much takes its place for external peripheral connectivity.

As for printers.... I have really expensive taste, so you probably don't want to hear my recommendations. There are low end solutions, but be warned, graphics applications (Illustrator particularly) require a printer with PostScript capability. Otherwise you have to make PDFs of everything to print it to a low-end printer.
If you want to be able to print from "anywhere" at your home/office and not worry about connectivity, the AirPort base station has a USB port on it which you can use to plug a USB printer into. As for brands, I wouldn't get anything but HP or Epson, but that's only what my ... jeeze, has it been 10 years already? ... experience has taught me.

I think I've taken up enough of your time. If you want, you can email further questions to jeff@crprint.com

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Re:Re:help with G4 specs please
Nov 16, 2004 11:43AM PST

no matter pc or mac,as working with very large files in dtp and graphic and a lot of time have to work on 2-3 graphic applications simultaneously, you need lots of lots of ram memory. my recommedation is start from 1Gb at the least, 512mb is definitely not enought.