herbet brasileiro writes some very good info on computer choices:
[good stuff deleted]
> There's no point
> in installing 768Mb of RAM in a computer with a 500MHz
> Pentium Celeron processor because processor power will
> be an issue before all this RAM gets used.
This point is questionable from a scanning perspective, and I'll give an
example from last night:
PIII/733 256MB Ram, Photosmart S20 bulk scanning (4 frames per strip), and
16 bit RGB at 2400 dpi. Each image when saved to disk with LZW compression
takes between 35 and 60 MB. That means the raw image in Photoshop 5.0 LE is
at least 50 MB. When I get done bulk scanning a strip of negatives, there
is considerable disk activity and very long delays in Photoshop while I try
to save out the images. This setup definitely needs another 256MB or RAM
for a total of 512MB (max limit of the Intel 815ep chipset on this
motherboard). 4 images at 50 MB is 200MB, so some paging does occur with
only 256MB RAM, since the OS (Win2000 server) generally takes about 90MB for
itself upon booting. Even though the system is a PIII/733, the processor
doesn't help much, and even a Celeron 500 would appear fast compared to the
slow disk. This is just a case in point specific to digital imaging that
makes our requirements as digital darkroom photographers a little different
than the average PC users' needs.
My recommendation is to go for as much memory as the system reasonably
supports. Image files in the future will only get larger, not smaller. A
quick calc of a 4000 dpi scan using 48 bit color results in a raw image byte
size of 144 MB, meaning a bulk scan of 4 images would need 576MB just for
images! Wow, I think my next PC gets a GIG of memory.
Cheers,
Gerald
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