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."

Comments

The GIMP

[XoXus]

Since you mentioned a $1000 limit, which I assumes includes software, there is no feasible way to squeeze Photoshop into the equation. Unless you want to use Paintshop Pro (which is kinda nice, but still costs a bit), you'll want to install The GIMP for her.

The GIMP

Don't use AMD

[Beowulf_Boy]

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

You're trolling or just quite out of touch

[Cuthalion]

What you say was true until the Athlon.

Re:You may HAVE to go with a Mac...

[rjamestaylor]

Yep. It's not merely brand-loyalty, it's training, experience, comfort and ... this is key ... community knowledge. In the artist community there is a lot of knowledge about "how to" do things on Macs using Mac-based software. To venture into a realm where people debate the merits of Scheme-like Script-Fu versus the simplicity of Perl-Fu won't be of benefit to your artist friend...(I'm overstating the problem)

Watching our graphic artists (they're an interesting group to watch...kinda like the giraffes at Wild Animal Park...) they'd be lost without their expensive Mac G3/G4s. One of our designers is a competent network admin (NT) and is a passable perl/CGI programmer on Linux systems, but he would be helpless without his Mac when it comes to his graphic/video design work.

One reason I jumped on Linux a few years ago was the large community availble on the Internet. When IBM dumped the Workpad z50's a couple years ago (almost), I got one and looked to NetBSD and its community to make the machine useful. I found very little information for a non-expert compared to the Linux community.

Re:A few thoughts...

[Spoing]

The Gimp has scanner support with the SANE plug-in.

Uh...yeah...for special SCSI scanners that cost a lot more than the cheap-o USB throwaways at Fry's.

Erm, that would not be true. While SCSI and parallel scanners have been supported for years, USB support is catching up. Here's a partial list;

1. USB scanners

For more information, take a look at the mailing lists.

What kind of work is being done?

[scotpurl]

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."

I think you need a bigger budget

[iforgotmyfirstlogon]

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

Re:Artist-friendly Macs...

[albamuth]

I understand that Macs really are the best for an artist, but my question was in terms of saving money. Obviously, my friend is not intending to do artwork primarily on the computer because if she was she'd be willing to sink a much larger investment. I meant to say that I regret the part about the "barnd-loyalty" because it seems the more I look, the better and better Macs seem. And I have been looking -- but there are hundreds of PC hardware reviews, dozens of different motherboards, the configuration that each one forces...it's a bit overwhelming. If I was building a gaming rig I'd know exactly what to do.

What she's intending to do with it is more on the level of scanning in her artwork and putting it on websites, plus whatever other avenues she chooses to pursue.

I'm no IBM-PC/Linux zealot, but I was genuinely curious if people know of a competitive alternative to Apple.

Re:My 2�

[liquidsin]

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.