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

About perf

[nsebban]

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 ?

You may HAVE to go with a Mac...

[Dimwit]

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.

"Brand loyalty"

[CdotZinger]

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.)

Beige G3 off of eBay - maybe a Blue & White G3

[jefflinwood]

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.

PCs are for *games*, haven't you heard?

[phillymjs]

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