Congratulations on the new computer Scott, and thanks for sharing your experience.

I’ll be honest, I love this computer and much prefer the the operating system over windows XP pro (which I thought I loved!) My PC was moving pretty quickly with it’s new dual core processor and 2GB of ram, but this mac pro with 8 cores and now 6GB of ram is really fast, silent, and smooth to work with.

I’ve been memorizing the key commands for general file management and finder navigation and in just the first week of using this computer it’s clearly faster and more efficient for me.

Ramble ramble, but I figured some of your readers would like to hear from another photographer in the same situation who took a different turn.

Thanks,

Ron

How interesting, but way beyond my technical understanding. But, what I find most fascinating is that you actually CONSIDERED a Mac after 20 years of teasing and ribbing me about using the BETA of computers. I think we’ve had 15 Mac’s in 20 years. Only had one crash, and that was the latest G5. By the way, I love the new Mac Book Pro.

Thanks for all of your help and Janine’s help with my website, and Blog.

Love,

Mom

You know, it shipped this past Friday, so we are anxiously awaiting its arrival!

Ron

Does Janine have her new machine yet? If so, is she happy with it? What about yourself?

Cheers!

Warren

Ron

Found your blog via Mark Graf’s blog. Thanks for sharing this detailed commentary on your research of MAC vs PC which is something I am also looking into these days as my Dell Dimension is clocking up 4 years in February. The insight has been useful as has all the follow up comments.

Other than that, and more importantly, I enjoy a lot of your great images!

Thomas

Five internal drives, that is a pretty slick setup. We decided on the network drive because it does make it easier for Janine and I to share. That would be great to have extra help in the office.

“occasionally find a photo worth keeping” Are you kidding – you have thousands of killer photos!

Turnagain Pass definitely get better light later in the winter – still a fun place to hang out.

Happy New Year!

Ron

I haven’t developed much of a system at all yet. Basically just a home built pc with 5 hard drives in it and a few 500 GB internal drives which are slipped into external enclosures. The external drives are my backup. So far so good with this very simple system, but now that I’m looking to have some help working with my images I can see that sharing access to my archive would greatly increase efficiency. It’s also time to improve my backup strategy now that I occasionally find a photo worth keeping.

Turnagain pass was gorgeous on the hike up Tin can ridge, but once we got were we wanted to be, the sun went behind the mountains, then when it came out again the clouds had moved in. All in the name of good practice!

cheers

Hi Warren,

I think you are right. This is right there with Canon / Nikon or Chevy / Ford! I did get a lot of traffic over this post thanks to some Mac sites.

Happy New Year,

Ron

I think you might agree that the comments you’ve collected so far on this thread suggest that personal computer operating systems are right up there with religion and politics.

Cheers!

Warren

Sorry to hear you refused to go with a Mac.

You know if you’re looking for technical advice you’re always welcome to give me a call.

Good luck with the computer, bro.

Cheers

Carl

You know Janine mentioned your email – I need to get on her computer and take a look – thanks for the reminder and the heads up!

Ron

It is sunny here – I bet you are having a great day in Turnagain Pass! I did hear 4 avalanches the other day while X-country skiing in the Resurrection Valley.

Writing a post on file management has been on this list for a while now. This is what we use for storage at home: http://www.infrant.com/products/products_details.php?name=ReadyNAS%20NVPlus

It is a pretty neat device – nice and quite, and gives us both instant access to any image in our inventory. We use it in our home network. Ideally, you would want it on a gigabit network, 100 is a little slow.

We then use external usb SimpleTech drives for off-site storage (friend’s house), and we also travel with a set of external drives so we can do business on the road.

What are you doing?

I do remember reading your post on considering a Mac.

I didn’t go with the liquid cooled jobby lol – liquid and computers didn’t sound like a good combination – I bet it is a lot quieter then a fan.

Thanks Michael for the explanation.

I clearly didn’t understand the raid capability of the Mac – I went back this morning and see what I missed. When you go to configure a Mac Pro, they don’t make that overly clear, I’m fairly certain I would have spent an unnecessary $1,000 on that card. They do claim it is “Ready to RAID”, but when I saw that card as an option, I incorrectly assumed it was needed.

I didn’t consider resale value as I typically keep my computers until the are obsolete. My Dell Dimenision that is being replaced is at least 6 years old and probably has zero value. Maybe if at 3 years my computer still had a reasonable value (ie Mac), I would sell it and upgrade – you make some good points.

Thanks!

So I’m wondering what you do for file storage? Or have you discussed this all in another post you can point me to? I’m looking to share some files around in my office a little more and realize having a nice large external storage would be the answer here. A small office network? What do you do?

Thanks for taking the time Ron.

ps. I’m heading for turnagain pass for another day of photographing snowboarders.

One factor you didn’t consider was resale value. The resale value of your Falcon on ebay in three years will be 100 dollars or less, maybe 150 with 8 gig of ram and the drives.

The resale value of the Mac Pro in three years will likely be 450-650 with little investment in sales (e.g. ebay).

So other than the 1000 or so minutes you wait a year for virus and malware scanning, and the 1500 extra minutes or so you spend managing your files, as long as you avoid a virus or malware you only lose a week of productivity. You would probably lose the same week in the first year to retraining anyway.

For Mark: You might be able to operate your SS4000 using Parallels with XP (they have added scsi support, but I’d check with them), or Bootcamp (not as convenient as you have to reboot to use). You’d need a scsi board, of course.

I can really empathize with your decision process here Ron as I am going through the very same thing right now. If I was going to go for a PC, I also decided it would most likely be Falcon Northwest – so I am really interested in how you end up liking it.

The system I priced out from Falcon was actually about the same as a Mac Pro – but I didn’t go for the internal raid on the Mac because it was such a pricey option, and I didn’t price the RAM from Apple, but figured on getting it afterwards and popping it in myself. I am holding out to see what Apple announces mid-January, and if that doesn’t seem to fit all that I want – I may end up at Falcon also.

My film scanner is also going to be an issue whatever system I end up with. It is an old SCSI attached Polaroid SS4000 which has served me well – but I highly doubt it will work with anything new. I really hate investing in a new film scanner since I don’t shoot it anymore.

So did you get the liquid cooled jobby? That was a new area for me that had me curious – was expecting a radiator cap on the top of the PC!