On: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 05:07:06 -0700 (PDT) Mekavich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Wrote:
Ernie, Not to put a damper on this rebuilding project, but if you're friend wants to put all that money into making a S900 a desktop publishing platform, then he's just tossing money away. I have a S900 with all the specs that you're looking into, and the performance is adequate for home use, but not for serious DTP. The reason why I continue to put money into it is that I'm so far down the road that spending a $100 here and there gets me into the world of OSX without having to shell out $3000 for what I really would like to have. Again, i have a S900 / 1Gig of ram / DVD Drive / ATI 7000 / Sonnet G3 400 mhz. >From what i'm reading, you're about to embark on a trip to get that S900 up to where I'm at. Well, I can tell you it's not going to be worth it. At work, i have a nice Dual G4 1Gig, with that, i can run InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, Word, Excel, Mail, an FTP, Dreamweaver, Suitcase, Acrobat, Firefox, TextEdit, iTunes, and Limewire all at the same time. the machine is incredibly responsive and fast. Yes, I use all those and i think for most designers, that covers about all the tools they'll use daily. I try and keep open programs to a minimum, but by 11am, i'm already have all those programs running, why i don't set it to auto launch i don't know. Anways, my S900 can run all those programs, but it takes a great deal of patience to wait for loading up and such. Often times, i'll fall asleep waiting. no kidding. try opening 20 folders in icon view. Watch the Finder's memory use climb from 7mb to over 200mb. at that point the finder gets really bogged down. My view is that if you have an S900 halfway modified, it's certainly cheaper than buying brand new, but in your case, if you have a stock machine, then it's just tossing money to get a Mac that doesn't perform well enough in a professional environment. If you want to do this as a hobby for enjoyment, then i'd go for the $220 Powerlogix G3 1gighz $120 ATI 9200 $80 DVD drive $128 max ram $200 two ATA hard drives. $ 70 ATA card well, that'll put you down almost $820 without tax and shipping. not to mention usb / firewire card. etc. and you're still looking at a bastardized mac with all the issues of future NON-compatibility and such. yeah, ryan is great but how long can he wage the war? All in all, the s900 is a great machine and can run even Tiger, but real world performance will have you screaming for speed, speed, speed. and the s900, all moderately decked out, doesn't have that speed. It'll get the work done, but at a price. Final : also web browsing is really slow on my machine. perhaps it's because I have two monitors hooked up to the one ati7000 card. heck i don't know anymore, i just do other things while the page refreshes.
This is exactly the advice my friend needs to hear, for him to to form his decisions.
Thank you very much Ernie -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[email protected]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
