Hardware Recomendations

SW
Posted By
Steve_Westra
Oct 24, 2003
Views
321
Replies
5
Status
Closed
My daughter has recently graduated from college with a degree in photography. Her next goal is to purchase a computer and Photoshop 8. My question concerns the best hardware to get. I have the ability to purchase Windows machines at a good price so I would like to stick with that platform. We will probably install Win XP. For an "advanced beginner", what would be your recommendations for processor speed, memory, hard drive, and video card? How about monitors? Flat screens look nice, but do they give as clear a display? We have read some previous posts on dual monitor setups, but for now we will stick with one monitor. She doesn’t have a ton of money to spend, so she is not looking for the top-of-the-line setup. Thanks for your help.
Steve

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dennis_johnson
Oct 24, 2003
CRT monitors give the best bang for the buck, and have the advantage of ease of calibration vs. LCD monitors.

Photoshop is a very RAM-hungry application. Whatever processor speed you buy, be sure you get as much RAM as you can afford. You’ll find having more RAM is more important than having higher clock speed. 1GB of RAM will make Photoshop happy. 2GB – or more – will make it positively delirious.

If you can, get a machine with two physical hard drives – or install a second drive yourself. Photoshop prefers to write its swap file to a drive other than the one the operating system uses for its virtual memory. You will achieve better performance with two drives, although Photoshop will work ok on machines with just one drive.

Photoshop does not require a high-end 3-D capable graphics card, and most people here would recommend Matrox as a good 2-D solution.
JT
Joe Thibodeau
Oct 24, 2003
Hi Steve,

I saw this post on the newsgroup. I have a Sony Vaio 1.8Ghz (pretty new), 60g hard drive, 512m ram, firewire, 4 USB ports, etc, etc, etc. with a Sony 18" Flat Panel for sale in the San Francisco bay area. $1400. This is a really nice machine that will do very well for digital photography work. It comes with Windows XP. I now only use laptops and the Vaio is stored in the original boxes.

As far as computing platform I have a Compaq Presario 3000 2.4Ghz, 512M ram, 60g drive, 80g external firewire drive, and a Watcom pen tablet. Make sure to get your daughter a pen tablet. Makes a world of difference in Photoshop.

Joe Thibodeau
Mill Valley, CA

wrote in message
My daughter has recently graduated from college with a degree in
photography. Her next goal is to purchase a computer and Photoshop 8. My question concerns the best hardware to get. I have the ability to purchase Windows machines at a good price so I would like to stick with that platform. We will probably install Win XP. For an "advanced beginner", what would be your recommendations for processor speed, memory, hard drive, and video card? How about monitors? Flat screens look nice, but do they give as clear a display? We have read some previous posts on dual monitor setups, but for now we will stick with one monitor. She doesn’t have a ton of money to spend, so she is not looking for the top-of-the-line setup. Thanks for your help.
Steve
JT
Joe Thibodeau
Oct 24, 2003
Folks I thought I sent this personally and not to the group. My apologies for this post.

Joe

"Joe Thibodeau" wrote in message
Hi Steve,

I saw this post on the newsgroup. I have a Sony Vaio 1.8Ghz (pretty new), 60g hard drive, 512m ram, firewire, 4 USB ports, etc, etc, etc. with a
Sony
18" Flat Panel for sale in the San Francisco bay area. $1400. This is a really nice machine that will do very well for digital photography work.
It
comes with Windows XP. I now only use laptops and the Vaio is stored in
the
original boxes.

As far as computing platform I have a Compaq Presario 3000 2.4Ghz, 512M
ram,
60g drive, 80g external firewire drive, and a Watcom pen tablet. Make sure to get your daughter a pen tablet. Makes a world of difference in
Photoshop.
Joe Thibodeau
Mill Valley, CA

wrote in message
My daughter has recently graduated from college with a degree in
photography. Her next goal is to purchase a computer and Photoshop 8. My question concerns the best hardware to get. I have the ability to purchase Windows machines at a good price so I would like to stick with that platform. We will probably install Win XP. For an "advanced beginner",
what
would be your recommendations for processor speed, memory, hard drive, and video card? How about monitors? Flat screens look nice, but do they give
as
clear a display? We have read some previous posts on dual monitor setups, but for now we will stick with one monitor. She doesn’t have a ton of
money
to spend, so she is not looking for the top-of-the-line setup. Thanks for your help.
Steve

RB
Robert_Blackwell
Oct 24, 2003
< http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/rsf_d imen4600_1?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs>

This system right here really isn’t all that bad.

2.60GHz w/800MHz FSB
512 RAM
120GB SATA HD
GF fx 5200 128MB
4x DVD RW (+/- etc etc etc)
Integrated 100mbps nic
no specs on the sound, but I’m sure it’s integrated.
Monitor not included but you can pickup a decent 17" CRT for about $150 Only one year warrenty but anything that’s going to go wrong will happen in the first few months anyway.

$1,358
$999 after $359 OFF Instantly
This configuration only.

Or, there’s also evalue code 6F867-D51010a not quite as good but includes 15" LCD for $999 after $100 rebate.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Oct 24, 2003
With memory being relatively cheap, whatever system you buy, I’d recommend a minimum of 1GB of RAM, even if that means adding in some yourself after the initial system purchase. For someone intending to use a computer for photography work and assuming they’d ultimately want to be creating images suitable for printing at large sizes, it isn’t uncommon for file sizes to approach 100MB. In fact, I’d guess that a 100MB image file might even be small for some of the folks here. But, assuming a 100MB image file size, then 1GB system RAM should give you enough memory headroom for Photoshop to work optimally.

Regards,

Daryl

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