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Suggestions for Someone Building an Artist's PC?
albamuth asks: "A friend of mine recently handed me $1000 (in the form of her credit card) and asked me to put together the best artist-friendly PC possible. Though I enjoy reading system guide recommendations put out by the likes of Arstechnica and Sharkyextreme,
it seems that most, if not all, of these guides are geared towards gaming purposes. My friend is an artist and was surprised when I approaced with a list of decidedly non-Apple recommendations. I countered that the lousiest new iMac would cost $999 and the reason why "all the other artists" use them is because of brand loyalty. However, now I'm tediously looking through motherboard and monitor reviews for things like Firewire ports and color accuracy, respectively. There's plenty of other things to think about as well: Photoshop vs. GIMP, [slide] scanners, video capture, etc. Though I'm pretty dogmatic on getting an AMD, I would like to hear opinions on hardware/software for a media/arts-oriented box."
The GIMP
For this,
Intel is much faster, they have a faster Math Co-proc or something like that, and can do all of the calculations for pictures and stuff much faster. Atleast thats what I've been told
Adobe is known for optimizing their products for INTEL Pentium, P2, P3, P4 CPU instructions (such as MMX/SSE I think). AMD CPU is a bad idea, as Photoshop will run slower.
I was told a few weeks ago that AMD fans published some patches to fix performances issues under adobe products such as Photoshop and Premiere, but i didn't check or test that.
Anybody did this ?
____
nico
Nico-Live
And I'm not being a Machead here. It depends on exactly what she needs. Is she upgrading a machine, or is this brand new? If this is brand new, no problem.
If this isn't brand-new - then you have a huge problem. What if she *needs* some Photoshop-only features? GIMP is nice, but it isn't Photoshop, and won't be for a while. (I'm not going to get involved with a flame war over that.)
Does she use a Mac now? In that case, I doubt she'll want to move to a PC. She's an artist, not a computer person - she may have a lot of money invested in Mac-only software. She wouldn't want to take the time to retrain on all sorts of different stuff, not to mention the price.
But if she's never used a computer for art before, or doesn't use it very often, this shouldn't be a problem. But the fact that you said she was surprised by not getting a Mac recommendation makes me think that she uses a Mac already.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Sorry for the second post. I also wanted to say that, in many cases, Macs are the best solution for consumer/prosumer-level artists. Apple knows their bread is buttered by the graphics and education markets, and they damn well make sure their machines are perfectly suited for them.
You can get color-matching software as part of most OSes, but it's integrated really well with the Mac. The - really good - FireWire support is also important. Digital cameras are a big deal. One-click DVD burning is a good thing, same with CDs. Free movie-making software and DVD-burning software - also good.
Sure, it's possible to get all this for another OS/platform, but it won't all be from one vendor, and it certainly won't be as well integrated. And iMovie is pretty nice for the (free) price. You might seriously want to consider a Mac - there're reasons other than "brand loyalty" that artists stay with them.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Just admit you're wrong about the Apples, get four more of those $1000-limit credit cards from this "artist," and buy her a dual G4 with 1.5 gigs of RAM and an "old" (c.2000) Apple 17" CRT (it's the most color-accurate monitor you won't need another $1000 for). Then go back, get another few $1000 added to her limits (like, say, five) so you can buy a slide scanner whose output won't make any artist physically ill. Then, since she'll be broke for the next ten years, give her a Post-It with "alt.binaries.mac.applications" written on it, so she can get Illustrator, Photoshop, Expression, Canvas and FreeHand for 2D, Final Cut, Premiere and After Effects for video, Performer and ProTools for sound, etc.
As cool as an AMD running Debian is for merrily shooting packets around, or Windows is for...I don't know...replacing a typewriter and an N64, I guess, they're not going to make any artist happy (unless by "artist" you mean what most people mean when they say ridiculous, brain-shriveling things like "I'm an artist!"--i.e., they do the equivalent of what Martha Stewart does with macaroni and construction paper, but without getting paid).
Seriously. Apple has this one locked up. No one else does it right, yet. Getting an arty chick a non-Apple is like getting you an Apple--understand?
(Or, if you can't do that, that Propaganda guy who hangs out here probably has a few used Amigas to get rid of.)
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
Macs
I countered that the lousiest new iMac would cost $999
[True, yes] and the reason why "all the other artists" use them is because of brand loyalty.
No. IANAMOA (Mac-owning artist) but I do know that Macs are still superior graphic-wise. Their CPUs handle that sort of thing a lot better (find out about the vector subsets in the G3s and G4s)... and even if you counter by saying Apple's benchmarks are made using Photoshop because of all the optimisations Photoshop has built in... that's kind of the point.
I admit I don't know a great deal about Macs but there have been several other discussions about Mac vs PC over the past few months (unfortunately I haven't bookmarked any) - try and find them. Go look on graphic websites and do some research about the sort of computers these professionals use - somehow while slashdot is prabablya good place to ask about free software, it's probably not a good place to find out about what software you're going to need.
Consider your friend's requirements in a non-free-software-only light
Somehow I get the idea you don't know a great deal about using / creating graphics on a computer, and that this friend of yours has asked you to buy this computer because you know about computers, not because you know about computers and are also an artist.
Few computer-using artists that I know would not use Photoshop. Many use other programs in addition, of course, but none would ever not use Photoshop. Sound like a blanket statement? Your friend probably has other artist friends that use computers - ask them. Or go look on the net - like I said before, I don't think
What I can say is that the Gimp will probably not do. I like the Gimp and I applaud the efforts of those making it. However, when you get down to the base of things, the Gimp simply doesn't have all the functionality of Photoshop. It is also a lot harder to use. This friend of yours sounds like a newbie as far as computers go: I really don't think that a Linux (or even Windows) computer running the Gimp is going to be suitable. Even running Windows, just the differences in the gui might be off-putting. It's colour support isn't too good either (as in the various ways it represents colour, rgb, cmyk and other, bits per channel... etc). Also (I don't know, but it just occurred to me you should check) does the Gimp have scanner support? From memory, I don't think so.
Other things she might need that might not fit into $1000
Another thing you might not have considered is a scanner or a printer. Is the artist going to distribute her work purely electronically? Will she want to have a photo-quality printer?
And, how is she going to get her hand-done work onto the computer? It sounds like she is an artist who is moving to using a computer, so she has, and probably will, use normal non-electronic methods for the actual drawing. You're going to have to get these onto the computer somehow. You haven't mentioned anything in your post that wasn't about software; but hardware like is also something to consider.
Rethink it...
:) There's nothing wrong with a G3 except that it's old... like a P3 450 in the PC world. Go for a good, reasonably-priced but not cutting-edge computer, that she'll be able to use without being forced to pay for something she can manage without.
/. is the place for finding out what you're going to have to buy. I think you should do some research on art sites and that kind of thing as well. Don't approach this from the perspective that free software will do just as well as commercial. That may be true for other areas like office apps, etc, but it is not true for graphics.
So, investigate Macs. You could get a second-hand mac for less than a new one
I also think that Photoshop is a must. Investigate second-hand copies, or student software (are you a student? Is your friend?)
And don't forget hardware like scanners etc as well. Somehow I think you're going to have a bit of trouble fitting this into $1000... $1500 maybe though.
I don't think
Good luck.
The reason people use macs is not out of brand loyalty. They are easier to deal with and less hassle. And with OS/X should could run gimp if you wanted to make her. However, i don't know of many serious graphics people that use GIMP. Furthermore although a low-end mac may not stack up for clock-speed against your AMD machine, actual processor performance is not measured by processor speed, but i'm sure you already know that.
Apple makes a great machine. I switched to using a mac, after erratic behavior compiling C++ Components for an ASP application. After I finished the project, i bought a mac, and haven't regretted it one bit. It has great Java support, i get unix, and perhaps the most sexy UI around.
What you say was true until the Athlon.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
1.4Ghz AlthonXP (1600+)
SiS 735 based mainboard
512MB CAS2.5 DDR
Matrox G550 (dualhead + high visual quality + solid drivers, at least for Win32)
work with something like that as a based spec...
Don't proselytize. Get her an mid to upper range Mac, convince her that she will need to spend more but it is worth it.
If you go with MacOSX you can get her to try other OS's and applications later down the road.
For things like font handling, printing, and media creation *NO* major operating system beats the quality of apple's default tools. There's plenty of third party applications as well, just ask Adobe. Do not underestimate the power of being able to drag applications and documents all around the hard drive and still have them work flawlessly. Do not underestimate how nice it is to have application directories that are not full of confusingly named support files.
If your friend wants to be an artist, not a tech enthusiast she will not appreciate having to do extra administration work on operating systems that do not cater to her community.
I was a consultant for a media house that had a mix of windows, macs, (and when I was done) linux servers. The best people there regarded the windows platform as a necessary evil for doing business with non-artist customers, but never their first choice for a job.
I wish you luck.
Just build a standard Athlon 1000 system (500$), find a used graphics tablet (50$), spend the remaining 450$ on ebay for yourself :)
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I'm not an artist, I'm a programmer. But even so, if you tried to take away my PhotoShop, I would try to take away parts of your body. The GIMP can do some of the things that PhotoShop does. Does that mean it's an adequate replacement? Well, I've never met anyone who runs a PhotoShop-capable OS and the GIMP. (Though I am sure there are some who dodn't have the money and aren't willing to pirate software, and used up their free month of Paint Shop Pro, and so on.)
PhotoShop is 11 years old (originally written to manually draw the scene where the 'russian water tentacle' splashes to the ground in the film The Abyss), and every major release has included significant improvements, the addition of worthwhile features, and generally more polish. When I look through the menus I don't think "bloat, bloat, bloat", I think "Wow, I wish it had that feature in version 5.5, when I was trying to blah blah blah", and "What does this thingy do? *fiddle fiddle* WOW, THAT'S USEFUL!"
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Since everyone is talking whole system, I'll only mention the main peripheral concern: a graphics tablet. My recommendation is to check out Wacom- their line of professional graphics tablets are just about the best out there- while being both Mac and PC enabled.
Do you like Japanese imports?
Two things:
1. It's not YOUR machine. My guess is that someone with the kind of experience needed to venture off into the non MS/Apple world isn't the kind of person that's going to have someone else looking for a machine for them. Things like the GIMP might make your heart beat a little faster, but unfortunately it doesn't have the same effect on everyone. SHE has to use this machine, not you, so unless you expect to sit with her and work out every little problem that arises, go with the established standards for graphic arts in both hardware & software.
2. Good luck getting any of those standards for $1000.
Tell your friend to trust her money with someone who will take only her needs into consideration.
Also, tell her that $1000 isn't going to cut it, because unless she wants a bottom of the line iMac, she's not going to be able to afford a good enough monitor to do what she wants AND have a computer to go with it.
I'd say some stuff about why you should reconsider Macs but lots of other people already said it. If you get a chance, reply to this article at some point so we can all learn what you end up deciding.
i'm sure many ppl have said this....but cmon....the MAC is made for art...
i'm selling my G3 tower with U2W scsi and a beautiful 17" monitor, i'll let it go for $1000
www.kfs27.com Click the For Sale link
hope to hear from you
Kenny Sabarese
www.kennysabarese.com
I would never put a beginner on anything but a mac. I can support macs over the phone, when it doesn't work it is obvious how to make it work. Windows doesn't do that, unix doesn't do that. So macs are there by default. And linux will run on a mac so you have a good upgrade path.
Get rid of your PC bias, and get her a real graphics computer. Remember, even if the PC was better, all other artists use a mac, so she has to. Thats why windows is popular, everyone uses it, except in her world it is the mac.
If the computer is going to be doing classwork and idle fiddling, then a smaller monitor (17") and a slower computer is acceptable (and a fully-loaded iMac might work). If your friend is intending to go into commercial work, then a small loan to finance the system is a must. $1,000 won't buy anything. Figure $4,000-6,000 (Dual 20" monitors, SCSI disks, etc.)
Go for a small loan and not racking up credit card purchases. Bad bank loans are 1/2 to 1/3 the interest rate of credit cards. Most credit card companies are just legalized loan sharks.
One easy way to save money is to not buy an Apple monitor. I don't know about the newest Apple monitors (the LCDs or the Mitsubishi CRTs), but the old ones were Sony's that were marked up about 40%. (They all had Trinitron tubes.) Dual 17" monitors is more monitor space, and more useable, than a single 20" monitor. And about the same price.
And I have to throw in a joke from an BBS I used to frequent that was run purely on Amiga, "Apple users would pay $1,000 for a toaster if it had an Apple logo on it."
Considering the retail on Adobe's Design Collection is a cool $999 (ditto for their Publishing Collection), that doesn't leave a helluva lot for hardware, even if you don't pay retail.
I'd double the budget, buy a used Apple G4 like this, and one of the Adobe sets and a scanner.
- Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
I would have to agree with the general tone of these responses - I was researching buying a new computer for our graphic artist and the department paying for it suggested a PC to 'save money'. When the designer heard that, she went into convulsions and beat the administrators about the head violently. I ended up speccing out a dual-500 G4, Radeon AGP, Rage 128 PCI, dual 19" CRTs and a firewire slide scanner. She's happy as a clam and churning out beautiful art faster than we can send her requests... It was expensive but worth every penny, both in my support time (0) and her happiness and productivity. In my last job I supported 65 faculty and staff Macs, 2 servers, a Protools studio, a student computer lab, and 3 video streaming machines and a QTSS server all in 8-10 hours a week. Don't ignore support issues when it comes to macs.
My fiancee is an artist, and we have both PC's and MAC. You can build the PC itself for about $500 for a 1Ghz with plenty of RAM (at least 256, if not 384MB), a $99 64MB GeForce2 card should also do the trick. The trickiest things with artists computers are:
A: Input device. An intellimouse explorer is necessary virtually. I am getting an AIPTek graphics tablet (8x5", $100) for my GF to replace an antique Wacom, tablets are good. Although the box says PC only, I have procured Mac OS9 drivers from AipTek.
B: Disk. Don't just go big and leave it at that, they must be big and fast. PSDs can get very big, and take a lot of time to move around on a 5400 RPM drive.
C: Display. I have been a Sony Trinitron junky for the last 10 years and don't see that changing at all soon. I currently posess two 21" and one 17". If you go to CompUSA with a Rape Me sign on your forehead, you'll pay $799 for a good 21" sony. I got one from a dotcom selloff (unfortunately the one that I was working for at the time, dammit), and the other one came two days ago from an HP Inventory reduction. I paid $400, box had never been opened, check EBay.
Good luck, $1000 is a tight tight budget, but I personally think it can be done, easily actually. Build the machine from commodity parts and you should come in well under $500, add $400 for the monitor, $10 keyboard and $50 mouse.
Software can be sticky. Gimp for windows is fine for starters, but Photoshop, and MUCH more importantly, Illustrator, are necessary for anything very productive.
Off-/. messages are welcome.
I see one maggot, it all gets thrown away -- My Fiancee
I like music
You don't give enough info. For example:
"I'm a gamer, what's the best PC for me?" Okay, do you play at LAN parties, do you play RTS, FPS, sol.exe?
Similarly, what does it mean 'she's an artist'? Does she work with photo manipulation, is she a painter, is she a playwright?
The thing is, the computer is a means, not an end. You have to figure out what medium she is working in. I'll assume it's photo manipulation, given your mention of slide scanners. Now you have to figure out what program(s) she likes. Let her try the GIMP. Let her try Photoshop. Let her try whatever other things are out there. THAT is what should decide your platform.
If she likes some Mac program most, and a little bit she likes the GIMP, get her a Mac (your preference be damned) and go with it. Say she likes some WinXX program. Go with that.
A couple of things: shift money heavily towards the monitor. As a matter of fact, get her to go up to $1500 so that you can get a larger monitor. Even if you have to skimp on processor. And load it with RAM (as much as the machine will take) and then pack in a gigantic hard drive. Probably want a cd-burner of some sort. The difference between a $300 processor and a $100 processor is far less than the difference between $300 of RAM and $100 of RAM, especially in perceived performance.
Pay attention to your user, and try to show a little less geeky arrogance next time.
BTW, an iMac can be had for $799. Have you done any research, or did you just pan the Mac outright?
Final thought: the software isn't cheap. Has your friend included this in the $1000? If she hasn't, you are likely going to be stuck with either Linux/GIMP or iMac/builtin stuff.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
IMHO, you can't make an artist friendly PC for $1000, purely because an artist friendly monitor alone will set you back that much. You'd need a high end CRT (don't even think about going for an LCD screen). I'd recommend an Eizo Flexscan T761. If you can't stretch to that, then you can get an LG Flatron 915FT+ for a fair bit less. The monitor is by far the most important factor in an artist's PC. You certainly don't need the latest and greatest video card, for example, even though that may seem counter intuitive. Buy the best monitor you can afford, and then build the rest of the machine with the budget you have left. Anything else is false economy, and you'll regret it later.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
this is a reliable setup. the monitor has a 5-year! warranty. Nice.
Computer Price w/no speakers
suppliers: newegg, ncix, and crucial
512 MB RAM 121
Enlight ATX Mid Tower 340W 79
IBM 40 GIG 7200rpm DMA drive 105
MSI VIA Soc-A RAID K7T266Pro2a 147 w/sound
AMD Athlon XP 1600+ with Fan 150
Toshiba 16 x 48 DVD IDE 76
USB Keyboard & Mouse 35
D-Link DSS5 5prt 10/100 Switch 44
NVIDIA GeF2PRO 64MB TV-Out 150
Sub total 907
Hitachi CM823F 607
Grand Total 1505
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
And the only reason that graphic artists prefer the Mac is brand-loyalty? The querant is goofy-stupid. Have his friend entrust her money to someone who isn't a dipshit, that's my advice.
Peace,
(jfb)
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
Ignore the people posting here telling you to buy a Mac. There's lots of blah blah blah, but your bottom line is $1000, so forget about it. And it isn't necessary anyway.
Like others have said, a good monitor is important. They go on about color matching and so on, and yeah, that's key for some things. You don't say exactly what your friend is going to be doing, though, so ultra-super-precision color might be not as critical for her as it is for some people. And given your budget, that level of color precision isn't really an option, anyway.
I'd go with a 19" Samsung SyncMaster monitor. I picked one up from Buy.com a few months ago for a friend for about $250. Great monitor for the money (sorry I don't recall the model number offhand).
Now, this is as much a religious topic as any, but as far as monitors go I'd make sure to get her a shadow mask. Get her a Trinitron tube and I'll lay odds she'll be calling you to complain about those two funny lines on her screen. It ain't worth the potential headache, trust me.
Also, make the damn computer quiet! She'll probably also hate it if it sounds like a jet engine. Grab a couple of Silencer fans from PC Power and Cooling, and use a 60-to-80mm adapter on the heat sink and put a Silencer at the top of it. Use a Seagate Barracuda IV hard drive - almost completely silent - and an Antec SX630 case, which is a nice size, reasonably decent-looking and has an excellent and quiet PS. Plus, if you're building this thing, trust me, it's worth spending a few extra bucks here. Anyway, just using these components will leave you with a nearly-silent PC for not a whole lot of extra scratch. For her, it's probably well, well worth it.
MATROX. She's not going to be firing up Wolfenstein, right? So get her a Matrox G450. No fan, no noise, cheap, and it's the best 2D image quality going. You shouldn't even consider anything else (unless she games).
Give her a healthy amount of RAM. Fortunately, it's cheap. CPU: whatever. Everything else: whatever. She ain't gonna care about it. If she'll be listening to music, you can still get the Ensoniq AudioPCI for dirt cheap, and it's better than onboard audio. Audition speakers at the local store and let her decide how much audio quality she wants to buy.
Good luck! I think you can pull off a real nice system for her even given your budget constraint.
And she loves her iMac. But that's not necessarily the truth for all artists. In this case, I think it's mainly brand loyalty, but it's loyalty based on ease of use. (And she has used Wintels, but she always complains about them being non-intuitive.)
Her favorite periperal is an Wacom Intuos tablet. She thinks that most artists that also work outside of a digital medium would really appreciate the translation of pen strokes to a paint/drawing program. Make sure the platform you choose has the capability to support a tablet.
And her favorite art program is Photoshop. I've tried to get her using GIMP and OSX, but Photoshop is too ingrained in her past and she doesn't want to relearn everything. And since Photoshop won't run natively on OSX, it's hard to get her to leave MacOS 9. But if you've got a $1000 price limit, you're probably not going to get Photoshop, unless you already have a copy, or you have a separate software budget.
Perhaps the most important thing to consider is if the artist in question has a OS preference... if they've used something before, and a loathe to relearn day to day tasks, a lot of your choice is already made for you. And make sure you don't miss any of those "forgotten" requirements... like "But I really wanted Photoshop!"
Slightly obsolete example: back when there were still a lot of proprietary-architecture mass-market computers around (Atari, Acorn, Sinclair), a musician friend asked me for suggestions on his first computer. To me it seemed obvious: the Amiga was relatively inexpensive, and came with MIDI hardware as a standard feature. Small problem: all the people he needed to trade files with (other musicians, his publisher) used Macs. He's still a Mac person.
And really, that's the only reason Macs still exist. Yes, they're easier to use than any other system. Yes, the basic architecture is better that of commodity PCs. But count that against the higher cost, the dwindling application base, and the long struggle to give the box a modern multitasking OS. Small wonder Apple continues to lose market share. Their total sales increase only because the total market is growing. And that source of growth can't last forever.
Still, there are people for whom a Mac is the best choice. These are the people who want to use apps that only exist on the Mac. Or people who just need one particular app that the Mac is particular good at. (The large number of people who just want a computer in order to surf the web is a big part of the IMac's success.) Or people who want to be part of a user community dominated by Mac people.
And no, I'm not a Mac person. I consider them overrated. But my priorities are not yours!
I completely understand why this post was marked as flamebait. Obviously suggesting that a computer other than a Mac can be used for graphic design is flamebait.
Think different! Vive le meta-moderation!
One of the biggest things to look at is her investment in fonts and typography. If she's an estabilshed artist who does any work with type she's probably been collecting fonts for years. When I worked at an ad agency the designers (regardless of their preference) had to use macs just becuase the company had invested in thousands of fonts. Look at what she has and what she will use. As many have said before its not about OS or hardware, look at what she has and what she will need. Is she working on photoshop or illustrator files now? If so than adobe's products should be a requirement. Invest heavily in RAM, especially if she's using a slide scanner for photo work or retouching. You'd be suprised at how photoshop can suck that up.
My dad just recently bought the Nikon CoolScan IV ED, and I can honestly say it's an excellent product. It may not fit into her budget with a price of approx $1200 CDN (not sure exact price, but somewhere around there).
Because of the purchase, I decided to price out a decent photography system for him, and I can say it isn't cheap.
As for processors, I personally use an AMD and I have yet to find a problem with them. Beside the obvious overclockability (someone get Oxford on the phone), they perform better than Intel CPU, all at a lower cost.
I think the main problem will be storage and speed of accessing that data. SCSI is the easy solution, but it isn't exactly cheap. Maybe a good 7200 RPM drive is in order. Saw one today (100G Western Digital) at Futureshop for $249.99 CDN after mail-in reabate.
I'm sure something decent can be built for $1000US, but the hardest part will be trying to draw the line of price/performance. Perhaps waiting a bit and saving up to a $2000 budget would be in order. Not to mention that, in the time it takes to save up some more, prices could fall significantly.
Happy hunting
However, is there a cost effective hardware alternative to Macintosh? -- that's my question. Something that'll run photoshop fine, scan, plug into a firewire/USB tablet, etc.? You really don't hear much about integrated firewire for Intel/AMD boards...do you know of any?
[pink beam of light]
Hell yeah, I love Photoshop / Illustrator and it would be inconsiderate not to include both for the box I'm building/buying. However, how disadvantaged is a PC running Photoshop vs. a Mac running it? With Win98, it was the frequent crashes, that's for sure.
[pink beam of light]
Tell your friend that you won't be able to do her justice with just $1000, as your only choice is a used Mac, and I doubt she wants that. Make it $2K, and you can help her.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
No, the reason why they use Macs is because Macs are the superior choice for what they do. Do you really think millions of people buy Macs every year because of loyalty!?!?! Come on, I can't believe that you are that naive. I personally know lots of artists, and they all use Macs. They all tell me that they can't do what they need to do with PCs, and it's not because they don't know any better.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
This one is pretty easy: Even considering Linux or Windows for an artist's workstation is akin to a manager asking if punch cards and a teletype are viable alternatives to Linux and Windows.
:-), if I may coin a term ;-).
I love Linux as much as anyone here, but as a guy whose partner is a graphic designer by trade, it became clear that Gimp, while it suits my needs very well, doesn't have many of the advanced features of Photoshop that my partner needs. For video, a Mac with Final Cut Pro and iDVD simply does not have any viable competitor at this time, though that could always change. It's certainly possible to capture video and apply some effects with Linux and Windows, but the level of automation achieved on the Mac platform in these areas makes it a better choice as artists can get more done in less time. It's a platform mostly targeted towards graphic and video artists, and it suits their needs very well. Think of it as the 'Linux' of graphic artists
This is probably the funniest, most ignorant thing I've ever read on Slashdot. I've got news for you - people use the MacOS because they WANT to. If you can see past your "my OS is better than yours" bigotry for a moment, you might see that all those artists have all chosen Macs for a REASON. Jeez.
Bust the budget initially or String things along. Follow me here.. You are going to need photoshop, at 600, that's going to chew the largest part of your budget, however, if she can do without PANATONE color, you can grab Photoshop elements for 100 or GIMP for free. If at some point she needs to work with PANATONE at home, she should hunt a for a new job. So now we are down to actually building the system, so initially she isn't going to have much more than a monitor, case, processor, memory, keyboard, mouse, and an OS. My sugestion would be:
Tyan Tiger MP
AthlonMP 1500
Cheap floppy
Value CD-RW (~8x)
IBM DTLA HDD
256MB Ram
Win ME
3COM/USR Ethernet card/modem
Inwin 508 series case
TNT-2 or Geforce2 MX video
SB Live Value Sound
Photoshop elements
Monitor to fit inside budget at this point will be tight but should be doable
As she gets some more cash, upgrade parts and pieces, add in the second proc, more memory, more disks, XP Pro/2000 Pro, better monitor, and better graphics (AIW-Radeon 8500 DV in the next little bit, its equivalent later on).
If the budget is very tight, a dual P-III solution (Abit BP-6?) may be what you can start with and switch to a PIV/DDR system when time and money permits.
The $1000 PC from dell, gateway, et al looks good and performs well enough for the home user, but a prosumer needs a little more.
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I'd say go with eBay on this one. Apple basically made 4 different models of pro/prosumer G3/G4 machines:
* Beige G3 - in an ugly PC-like beige case, this was the first generation of G3 machine. You can decent ones on eBay for about $250-300.
* Blue & White G3 - next generation. Much cooler case.
* G4 Cube - limited expandability, so I wouldn't get one for an artist.
* G4 Tower - too expensive on your limited budget.
I would spec out a beige G3 from eBay, and buy 256 megs of ram for it. The iMac won't cut it because of the 15" screen. Run Mac OS 9!!!!! Don't make her run Mac OS X just because you like UNIX better. I use both on my G4, but OS 9 is a lot easier to work with for a newbie. Also a lot faster on those G3 machines.
Get a 19"-21" Trinitron monitor ($500). And a Zip Drive off of eBay ($100, with some disks), so she can share with others. A CD-R drive, if it's not already in the G3, accomplishes the same thing, but it's a little harder to use.
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Just make sure she can stand the little horizontal lines in trinitron monitors. In fact, I think many artists prefer the shadow-mask variety, and I personally dislike them.
I'm presently at work (design at a screen printing shop) sitting between a pc (win98se, pii 450, 256mb ram) and a mac (g3 400, 192mb ram, os 8.6 (os9 sucks, osx == unstable for work)). I have photoshop/illustrator/flash/pagemaker installed on both. The only thing the pc ever gets used for, besides surfing slashdot, is driving a vinyl plotter. It just doesn't stack up, plain and simple.
do not read this line twice.
Graphics professionals don't buy Macs out of brand loyalty, they buy them because they are the best tool for the job. It is really that simple. No matter what advances have been made by Windows or Linux in the past decade, both are still lacking many of the vital features required by folk working in the print industry or in visual arts.
Unless you can get software on an academic discount (are you or your friend enrolled in a university?) you will be hard pressed to assemble an adequate system for only $1000. Even if you buy a used system (used iMacs can be had for $600-$700) you will find it hard to obtain the required application software with the remaining funds (Photoshop and Illustrator are expensive). If you can get academic discounts, however, it shouldn't be hard at all (you can get a new iMac plus a full suite of software for something near $1000. Apple offers reasonable discounts and bundles to academic buyers) to get a full package within budget.
In an extreme situation, you can get perfectly good used Macs (pre-G3, PCI PowerMacs: [789][56]00 series machines) at very reasonable prices (I recently bought two 8500s for $150 each) and slap in a G3 upgrade (~$150) and a bunch of RAM (~$40/128MB, comparatively expensive, but not monstrous), a new hard drive (18GB ~$160) and a nice monitor (any PC monitor will work, but you will need an adapter: $30 at the local computer shop) for well under the proposed $1000 limit. You still have the problem of software, however.
In the interests of full disclosure: I am a long time Mac user (since 1984) and own stock in Apple. I have also worked in the design graphics industry (as a typesetter and graphic artist) so I know something of what I speak. In recent years, I have migrated much of my computing off of Macs onto Linux, but only for web-surfing and programming (I changed careers in the early ninties. I'm now a software engineer). However, if I have something to do that involves looking good in print or on screen, I still use a Mac.
I use win2k. Photoshop (and for that matter everything else) works great. I've had a few problems with it's multiple monitor support (if you disable or move the second monitor, Photoshop's palettes and dialogs don't move, so they're lost, off of the screen, until you put your screens back where they were), but I don't think I've had it crash ever (Before I figured out what was going on with the monitors, I thought it got wedged once though, but was just stuck in an off-screen dialog box). That's 6.01. Don't use 6.0 if you value your TCP/IP stack.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
I know this is definitely out of a mortal's price range, but doesn't IRIX rule when it comes to Video production? Aren't most special FX done on an IRIX box?
I didnt think Macs were in the running.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
as i said: hehe !! my monitor was 700 buck!
;)
and my computer 2500 bucks (mac) i do want to enter the field of design, and i was a PC user before my workplace, when i wanted a new PC i was looking for one cuz they are cheap... then i figured they are not really, see the may look chap at first,m but if you look closer they have something missing, or some parts really crapy, or this or that, if you put up a pc box equivalent in power and goodies and compare the two they will come very close price wise...
BTW nothing broke on my mac as i knew it would, but any PC's at work school etc always seem to break or become corrupted somehow (use your imagination)
so what i am saying is that being a high school student, i am not rich (i had to pay 4 it with my own money) but you can see my computer came to over 3000 dollars (CND) and i am still happy with it (466 Mhz G4) - now for the same price u can get 733 Mhz G4 (bummer) so i really don't care if u get her a PC, but i want you to know, you a'int getting nothing for 1000 dollars!
I don't know jack about linux but I read slashdot anyway because I enjoy the debates. The reasons why you should not buy a winodws or linux machine for an artist are quite powerful.
:)
No real profiling support (that works) exists for anything but mac.
No real color management that works.
All businesses that do output for graphic artists use mac, they know mac, and can point to where profiling problems are occuring because of it.
Photoshop is not the only progran an "artist" needs to use, many other painting programs need to be used and using the same profile all the way across is very helpful.
When sending files to other artists you NEED to know your images are seen close to the same gamma on both computers or she will end up looking like someone that does not know what she is doing.
Ability to leverage the knowledge she has into a job, if she is not MAC literate you might as well not apply. Imagine a linux admin asking what rm -rf does (I learned that here
Yes mac's are expensive and yes they tend to drive a linux user bezerk, but this isnt your machine, this is hers. Get her a mac.
btw forget gimp, it is about as close to photoshop as I am to a Sr Linux admin (trust me this is not close) It is ok for a couple quick little things, but needs a hell of a lot of work on the interface. (Hold flamethrower please)
You need to get something that works NOW, not may work when the open source community smashes the corporate strongholds. Photoshop and the graphics world will be the last to fall. Ever try to get a mac user to use a command line hahaha. Too me 14 hours to find out how to get my ethernet card to let me surf the net(redhat 7.2), however, the mandrake install worked great. Go figure.
OK, a lot of the other posts are fairly insightful about recommending a Mac. (Where I work, on graphics person swears by Macs, the other swears at them.)
If you go with a PC solution, I strongly recommend a Matrox video card. Top notch color quality and 2d image performance. Crisp text, etc etc. In this arena, Matrox beats the pants off of anything nVidia or ATI can field, from what I've seen.
Also, get a Trinitron moniter. You can find 17-19" trinitrons in the 250-350 range. Yeah, that's going to likely be the biggest chuck of the 1000, but it's worth it.
In addition to the keyboard (I suggest Keytronic) and mouse (can't go wrong with a M$ scrollimouse), get her one of the "hobbyist" wacom tablets. They cost about 99, but I have two computer artists that think they're worth more than their weight in gold. (I know these work with macs too, so it's a dual purpose recommendation ;) ).
Don't worry about SCSI unless she wants to do video editing.
For motherboard recommendations I usually trust Tom's Hardware. The plain fact of the matter is that most graphics tools will run just fine on say a p3-500 running on a 440bx board. So even the cheapest duron you can buy and a decent abit or asus kt133/kt133a chipset board will handle PhotoShop with one hand tied behind it's back. Out pc-using graphicsgrrl is using a duron 850 machine and is just as happy as can be with it's performance (she was giggling at how fast some of the more cpu intensive filters were running).
So, here's a parts list and prices (USD), I'm taking all this from Essential Computer. They're a place I've had good dealings with three or four times now... Anyway, this is what I'd build if it were me.
- AMD duron 950 (retail box w/ HSF): $75
- Abit KT7A: $90
- Micron 512Mb pc133 dram: $69
- Matrox G550 (32mb ddr, db15 and dvi): $93
- SB pci128 sound card: $18
- Netgear 311 10/100 nic: $18 (and/or: 3com usr 2977 non-winmodem pci 56k $45)
- Seagate Barracuda ST340016A 40gb 7200rpm ata100 drive: $96
- Plextor 12/10/32 cdrw: $112
- kb/mouse/floppy: season to taste, probably about $30-40
- Enlight 7237 case w/ 300w pwr: $59 (and another case fan for the back side: $5)
So that's a total of about $650, probably another $100 for shipping. I didn't include a moniter there, becuase the best way to buy a moniter is to go comparison shopping with your own eyes. Best Buy is currently selling a Sony 17" Trinitron moniter for 329. The moniter I use is pretty decent, it's a 19" Mag flat screen (trinitron clone). Looks like BB has an equivalent model for ~$220. So if that 1000 is only for the hardware, this system will just about fit that (tack on more if she wants scanner/printer/wacom).I didn't include software costs in that, but I'd really suggest she go with windows 2000. Stable and it supports the widest range of graphics software and hardware (I love open source as much as the rest of you, but frankly if you're serious about graphics OSS just doesn't cut it yet). That's probably $120, and then there's another $x for the graphics software itself. If you go with adobe, you would do best to find a college student and bribe them to buy you the academic-priced sw (you'll save probably 500+ dollars). (oh, and you can save $$$ on MS Word, if all she needs is simple document editing like for resumes or whatever, AbiWord works about as well as word97) There are of course alternatives to the official channels for Adobe and Macromedia producs, but that I leave up to you. YMMV (Your Morals May Vary).
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For starters, your friend's budget is ludicrous. She might as well have given you a garden spade and asked you to fill in the Grand Canyon. Unless she plans to pirate her software, the Adobe Design Collection alone will consume most of her $1000 budget without you even starting to consider hardware.
:-)
Secondly, you would not be doing her any favors by pushing a Windows or Linux solution on her. You *want* the fonts and the colors to be consistent from computer to computer, and you don't want her to make enemies at the print shop if they keep having to dust off their lone PC off in the corner to take care of her jobs. Windows may do the shit-work of word processing and database-storing for the planet, but in the design world *Macs* are "what everyone else uses."
I would personally do the eBay thing for a beige Power Mac G3 (if you want to do the video capture stuff, get the MiniTower model, which came standard with RCA A/V In and Out jacks). The original G3s still have a lot of life left in them and can take huge, cheap IDE drives and scads of RAM. You can toss a USB or USB/FireWire combo PCI card in them to use modern peripherals while still having built-in SCSI support for the older, used peripherals that she may need, like a high-quality scanner or a CD-R drive. Upgrading the processor to a G4 (since Photoshop can take advantage of AltiVec) might be a good idea, if you're so inclined and get a good price. You might even luck out and find a whole package deal like this being sold by an artist who has recently upgraded to a new G4.
Spare no expense on the monitor-- when putting together a system for a designer I usually recommend the largest ViewSonic the person can afford. Oh, not that it matters for this project-- no LCDs. IMHO, they're still not where they need to be for serious design work.
As for input devices, you can use a regular ADB keyboard or a nice USB one-- you may want to keep an ADB model around for maintenance purposes (more easily booting from CD, zapping PRAM). I swear by Logitech USB mice. Wacom makes the best graphics tablets, even their small consumer model is very nice.
OS 9.1 is nice and stable, and you can fairly easily optimize the System Folder items to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the machine. Even on occasions when the machine does go belly-up, a quick Nortoning will straighten it out 99% of the time.
That's it. Build her a system like that, and she'll be productive very quickly, and it will last her for years. If your friend is good at what she does, she'll get the debt incurred building it paid off pretty quickly, and then start putting money in her G5 or G6 Tower Fund.
~Philly
I also forgot to add that a lot of the G3 MiniTowers came standard with two monitor ports. Use the PCI video card to drive the big monitor, and buy your friend a 14" RGB display (Apple model M1212) to run on the onboard video and be her 'palette monitor'. The Apple 14" can be had on eBay for less than $50, including shipping. I know, because I just replaced my original 14" workhorse after 9 years of faithful service.
~Philly
You didn't say what kind of artist.
For a visual artist, I'd get:
used P3 or Celeron 600 or so
at least a half a gig of RAM
big Calcomp drawingslate
Windows 2000
Corel Draw 6
nice monitor
nice printer - 6 or 7 ink tanks
dunno about $1,000... maybe if you cheat
The memory will go farther than the cpu for the bucks...
Been out of the graphics end of things for almost 3 years. Never got into it enough that I had to wear the black kimono and throw a radar hood on the monitor -- but got close. (The kimono is worn so that you don't see your reflection in the monitor.)
I'm not sure if Apple is still selling a high-end monitor, or if they're letting someone else do it. I get the feeling apple is trying to build and sell Lexus computers. Having said that, I don't think LCDs are ready for high-end graphics, especially video. They might be giving up on glowing phosphor, and leaving that business to other people.
Nice resume - explains why u don't know jack about artists...
i wanted to see what kind of a person would suggest skipping a mac and photoshop, of course it's obvious! your a F** king Nerd! you don't know jack about art! why you even brought your standards so high only God knows! if you don't know what you are talking about: Sit quiet, bend down and network some PC will you.
She should try Squeak (a fully-integrated cross-platform drawing environment and programming environment). Squeak is a dialect of SmallTalk-80. Alan Kay designed it as a medium for "story-telling" and a platform for children to program with. In fact, he designed it for toddlers to program with, but I think he's still a bit shy from that goal. ; )
Its 3-D graphical capabilities, its music capabilities, its speed, and ease of use are just out this world, and as a result they may not become immediately apparent to the average/advanced user. Squeak is perfect for the artist. It's free, it's easy, and it can produce results that people have never seen before.
All zipped up, it's only 8 MB and it can be downloaded for free from http://www.squeak.org/
Before you show it to your friend, you should explore it yourself with the Blue Squeak book in hand. After that, if she really likes it, you should both read the White Squeak book and the "Smalltalk, Objects, and Design." By Chamond Liu.
Enjoy,
Stephan
Let us put it clearer.
What matters, IMHO is what is the optimum equipment that can be bought for the minimum ammount of money. Not what is all that one artist could buy.
I mean, everybody knows that there are always new and improved scanners in the market, for example. So you do not have to have it, just have a Zip drive to go to the shop where they have the new scanner and scan what you need and copy the file in the zip disk.
The point is what is the minimum optimized equipment required.
Rwe obliged 2 save our future by choosing:O3 hole-greenhouse effect instead of accepting everydays gossip-nonsense chat?
If no animation, then any decent video card with 32+ ram would do. Add in lots of conventional ram to help processing large graphics files. and a large drive to store them. Being able to run in True color at max rez is very nice indeed.
Add in an oversized monitor, 19" at least, check reviews for color trueness. Some earlier NECs were great, but ran warm, for example. Upgrade to a flat screen later.
Basically you do not need a super high end machine if you are not doing animations or video. You can go back one or two notches for the processor, thus you could get a 1 gighz and dump the rest into reliable hardware, large ram and large storage. It is not uncommon to have multiple files running from 10 to 50 megs, depending on work.
3D Rendering is another game entirely, and there the rendering time can extend into multiple hours, regardless. In this case, faster CPUs are great, but having the ram first is likely the best option.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The important thing here is that the lady has asked for a PC and given a budget of $1000.
Trying to convince her to buy anything else would be confusing, and asking her to up the budget may not be possible.
Find the solution that fits the requirements, don't offer an unobtainable solution. A PC can be had for $1000 that will fill her purposes. True, a Mac would be ideal as she would be able to draw on the experience of her peers but considering the requirements this may not be an option. For all we know she could already be familiar with the PC interfaces (Windows).
I initially thought of an AMD system as I am under the impression that it has a stronger floating point processer, however Intel has SSE2 which I understand Adobe has optimised heavily for. AMD's lower cost would eventually lead me to AMD though.
One thing to consider is that the lady describes herself as an artist, not a graphic designer. This could heavily influence what software she requires. If she uses paint mediums or similar then she might prefer Illustrator and Painter over Photoshop. A graphics tablet as others mentioned would be a must.
Just make sure you give her what she asks for.
Photogenics, now running on Linux, Windows, PocketPC, and Amiga.
http://www.idruna.com/products.html
that vertical CD slot, combined with the heavy use of chrome, always did remind me of a toaster.