Turning computer to an editing pc....

jzwake · Addict Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 801

A properly built and configured PC can handle Video, Audio and yes even Email Rolling Eyes

just as Good as any MAC. My opinion is based on comparing my P4 PC Workstation At Home to My G5 workstation at Home on the same desk.

Now, even though I make my living as a Engineer that spends a lot of time conviencing people to do X,Y, Z to their Windows networks, Apple Computers can be less hassel for most people.

My reasoning is that most People out there use a Computer just to get online and check email with the occansional letter to type. These people want a system they can count on working with little hassle becuase they do not know enough about computers to troubshoot or repair them. Macs work out great because besided being cute as a button on their desk, they don't have as many people gunning to take advantage of them. Weather its a security hole in teh OS or IE, Viruses, spyware, etc, Windows users always have to stay current and be aggressive about protecting their PC. If they don't the PC starts failing on them and they complain not knowing their Pc is chopped ful of crap. The draw back is once Apple grows enough, the same people will start devising ways to take advantage of MACs. I'm Sure safari has enough leaks and holes to royally screw some people up, but why bother messing with such a small amount of users when MS is always ripe for the picking. It keeps me employed Smile

It all depends on the user. The mini mac is the first mac to be so competively priced and desirable. It will be interesting to see where it takes apple.

I did not want to get all into software issues on a PC, but if you download all those neat apps, chances are your PC will be hosed eventually.

SO in closing:

Your PC should not crash, if it does there is a problem.
MACs are pretty.
Both PCs and MACs can be great PCs.
Yes, my MAC has locked up.

P4, 1.5GB RAM, Intel MB, 144 GB SCSI 10K Video storage, 36 GB Boot Drive.
XP pro, Premier 6.5, Pinnacle liquid edition, Sound Forge

G5, Single 1.6, 1.25 GB RAM, 80x2 GB
Final Cut Express 2

I like Final Cut and am trying to move all my work that way.
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SUZUKI ALTO

Bowen · Posted: Feb 17, 2005 9:24 am Post subject:

kavlock99 · Posted: Feb 17, 2005 11:54 am Post subject:

markymarc · Posted: Feb 19, 2005 10:29 am Post subject:

Ok wow... didn't expect to have this thread turn to a PC vs MAC. I was simply asking if my PC was ok for what I wanted to do. Not because im worried what is better but simply because i happen to have a spare PC not mac handy that i could fiddle with... obviously you all pointed out that it is under powered. Ok fine no problem, plan B. I looked up the macs and so far everything is kinda pricey for what I need. I'm 20, in college, working as a server, and spending lots of money on wakeboarding and other extra curicular activities... haha Laughing

Plus im trying to put some money aside to invest... So a mini mac for $600 is a bit much... not outrageous and imposible but more than I want to pay.
Eventually i will have a mac as part of my arsenal to do editing only but untill then I must resort to something else.....

I'm not trying to become hollywood as far as editing and what not, I just need a nice machine that will handle that task easily and can also use for whatever else I might wana do. Right now my laptops works fine for some editing, gaming, and homework, but i want to edit more therefore I need more space and power, which is something my laptop cannot provide....
So my plan after doing some search is that I could get a PC with P4 3.0ghz HT, 1gb ram, 80 or more gb hard drive, CD-RW,DVDR, and a decent video card for around $400 give or take some.... I already have Adobe Premiere 6.5 as far as editing software... I'm thinking that should do the work i needed for plus let me play games when im not editing....

jumalian · Ladies Man Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 7625 City: san diego

markymarc · Posted: Feb 20, 2005 12:32 am Post subject:

JamesWatts · Addict Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 685 City: Santa Monica

Note that Jzwake's review was written based on a single 1.6ghz G5, and final cut 2, which runs in OS9

-James

jzwake · Addict Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 801

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

My 1.25 ghz Powerbook G4 runs FCP like a champ and a 1.6 G5 is not only a much faster processor but also has a much faster bus and overall architecture. I would agree with you that it shouldn't matter.

And yes the main advantage of the Mac is running Mac apps (whether they're written by Apple or not) and having an extremely stable state of the art OS. Read the article in the latest Fortune magazine about Steve Jobs if you'd like to see why Wall Street is just enamored of everything Apple has done since he came back, from the Mac OS to the iPod.

BTW the hot rumor is that FCP 5 will be announced at NAB and will only run on the upcoming OS 10.4. This will be another major revision to the OS which will leverage the 64 bit G5 processor.

JamesWatts · Addict Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 685 City: Santa Monica

yes. Finaly full use of the 64 bit...cant wait!

ryanprouty · Newbie Joined: 16 Dec 2004 Posts: 36 City: San Francisco

You guys should play a llittle nicer..

I'd be on a mac, even if never touched anytype of video and/or graphics... they're just better all around... i'l fight to the death about this one... i worked at a CompUSA for 2 years, 1st year was selling and repairing PC's, and the second year was selling and (very rarely) repairing Apple's. Before that, I worked at a TV station for two years, the first year editing on a PC with Avid and/or premiere, and the second year working with Apple and FCP. Unless you're playing games, Apple is better all around, i think i've paid my dues on figuring out this one. The only reason games are better on PC's, is because they're designed for PC's first, and then reprogrammed for Apple.

Bring it! haha...

scott a · Ladies Man Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 9810

ryanprouty · Newbie Joined: 16 Dec 2004 Posts: 36 City: San Francisco

um... no... apple's sold over pc's 3:1... san francisco is the center for computer design and visual effects so everyone here is hardcore into apple - thus why Macworld is held in SF every year... apple's just don't break down... they don't crash because they're UNIX based.. (i will definitely admit that apple's SUCKED before OSX, and i hated them then, but since UNIX, they are SOLID

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

The original head of the Mac team just died of cancer. For those interested there's a short history of the Mac included in the following:

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/tech/story.jsp?floc=FF-APO-1700&idq=/ff/story/0001/20050228/0123968848.htm&sc=1700

I'm not sure the argument about reliability makes much sense unless you compare the Mac to a specific brand of PC. I'm sure there are high end PC's that are more reliable and probably more expensive. OS aside when it comes to hardware reliability you get what you pay for. I think Apple has done a reasonable job balancing the quality of it's components vs it's overall cost.

JamesWatts · Addict Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 685 City: Santa Monica

everyone always says "oh macs are so expensive!"....yet i walk threw best but and every new sony laptop is like 3 Grand....

I think Apple had done a good job comming out with a wide variety of "Affordable" Units for each group of consumers.

For the average person(emails, pictures,webbrowsing,wordprocessing) The mini mac, or Imac is affordable/reasonably priced to that group of comsumers.

For Video/3D/Graphic Artists, a G5 or powerbook is affordable, and reasonably priced to that group.

I Just think that you get more for your dollar with a Mac, Yes im sure there are some good PC's but these pc's are not being sold at electronic stores. My parents wanted a PC so I had them get the Nicest Sony one that was available, this was like 5 monthes ago. yes it is nice. but the adware and all that slows it down now, and other stuff is making it tweak out. its just annoying trying to fix all that stuff.

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

I think the following will give you a pretty good idea of where the Mac stands when it comes to graphics, video and IT. Future graphics/video students: pay close attention to the percentages they list in those fields.

Macs in business to stay
By Mark Hall

Last month, Brandchannel.com dubbed Apple Computer Inc. the "brand with the most global impact." But you'd never know it by looking at corporate desktops today.

Windows machines are the undisputed personal computers of choice for corporate IT, the biggest single market for PCs. Research conducted by Framingham, Mass.-based IDC underscores the fact. IDC ranked the maker of Macintosh machines No. 10 on its market-share list in 2004, two spots behind the Chinese company Lenovo Group Ltd. -- and the list was prepared before Lenovo's planned acquisition of IBM's PC unit.

Yet despite significant efforts by Windows suppliers, Apple still remains a dominant player in vertical market segments such as publishing and digital media. And with the growing popularity of its low-cost Xserve Unix servers, Apple has an opportunity to compete head-to-head with industry leaders like Dell Inc. inside the data center for general-purpose applications such as e-mail and Web serving.

Where's Mac?

Not surprisingly, according to research from New York-based TrendWatch, 83 percent of graphic designers, 77 percent of corporate design departments and 65 percent of advertising agencies rely on Macintosh computers. And publishers also continue to depend on Apple's machines.

Kim Vichitrananda, a desktop support engineer for 800 PCs and 250 Macs at The Dallas Morning News, acknowledges that Windows has comparable applications for the publishing market. But, she says, "those applications don't run as robustly on Windows. They're not as fast or as seamless as on the Mac. We could not replace Macs for PCs."

At The Home Depot Inc., senior engineer Bruce Covey evaluated only Mac options when he upgraded his video production equipment at the company's corporate headquarters in Atlanta. "We never considered the PC option, because it can't do what the Mac does in video production," he says.

Home Depot's video group standardized on dual-processor Mac G5 desktop machines with 2GB of RAM accessing 4TB of storage on Xserve RAID storage. Covey uses Apple's Final Cut Pro as his editing application.

His team also depends on outside freelance talent to produce nearly 300 10-to-45-minute videos every year on everything from CEO commentaries shot in the corporate studio to forklift-safety programs filmed in warehouses. Covey says the "lion's share" of freelance video talent "depend on Macs," so he does, too.

Mac Is Unix

Apple's embrace of Unix in its Mac OS X operating system gave the company a big boost among scientists who need hefty processing capabilities. Bill Van Etten, who does genetic research at the University of Pittsburgh, attributes the Mac's star power among scientists to the computer's ease of use, a broad set of scientific applications available for the Mac and, most important, its Unix-based operating system.

"As a life-science researcher, I simply have no use for an operating system that isn't Unix," says Van Etten.

In fact, OS X isn't just Unix but, with the exception of its user-interface and management tools code, it's open-source Unix. Apple integrates and specifically tunes its hardware for an additional 80 open-source projects, such as Apache, MySQL and JBoss for the Mac.

The Unix application software available for Macs is another benefit touted by users. "There are a ton of Unix apps designed for research," says Ben Hanes, senior systems analyst at Children's Hospital of Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), which is one of the top 10 recipients of research grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Van Etten acknowledges that "it is technically possible to get something for a Unix environment to run on Windows. [And] these applications might work sometimes, but it's slow, awkward and problematic."

At the Broad Institute for bioscience research in Cambridge, Mass., Stan Diamond, team leader for desktop support, says 95 percent of the servers in the institute's data center are Unix-based. About 20 percent of those are Macs.

It's doubtful that Oracle Corp. would have decided to port its Oracle 10g database to the Mac if the platform didn't have a Unix core. "We see value in OS X," says Sanjay Sadhu, director of worldwide alliances and channels at the database giant. "It's a great new enhancement." He adds that Oracle hopes to exploit Apple's strong position in the sciences and in creative and education markets.

In fact, Oracle has installed Xserves in its data center to run its Oracle Collaboration Suite for e-mail, voice mail and calendaring for 4,000 employees.

And Oracle is probably saving money doing so. Apple's dirt-cheap dual-processor Xserve competes favorably against Dell's PowerEdge 1850. The latter, loaded with dual 2.8GHz Intel Xeon processors and 2GB of memory with 600GB of SCSI-based storage and a 25-user Windows license, rang up at $12,717 last month on Dell's Web site. An Xserve with two 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 processors, 2GB of RAM, 580GB of ATA storage and unlimited OS X clients is a pittance in comparison, at $6,299.

Even running Linux, the Xserves are cheaper. And that's part of the reason the University of Pittsburgh's Van Etten, a Linux fan, opted for Xserves in his 120-node server cluster. The Mac is suddenly and uncharacteristically a low-cost option for IT shops.

A Safer Option

At Genentech Inc., a multibillion-dollar biotechnology firm in South San Francisco, Mark Jeffries oversees nearly 2,500 Macs. The senior systems specialist says the OS X machines are used "for various purposes," from scientists doing pure research to executives toying with spreadsheets.

According to Jeffries, the Mac's place in the market today is the result in large measure to Windows-centric IT shops that "have always been trying to find some reason to get rid of Macs." But he doesn't believe that the Mac is destined to remain locked in a few vertical segments, because of recent shifts in the technology landscape.

First, as Web services applications replace client/server software, Windows dependencies in an application's business logic disappear, as does the requirement for Windows machines.

The second shift, says Jeffries, is malware. He remembers a virus that shut down operations at a couple of his company's competitors in 2003 because of their total dependency on Windows while Genentech's business continued unaffected. He says the company's top executives took note of that event, and it reaffirmed their commitment to the Mac.

"The Mac is secure, if not bulletproof," Jeffries says. That's because OS X was developed after the widespread adoption of the Internet, so Apple "designed it to be secure by default."

"Windows was designed for features, not security," he adds.

Across San Francisco Bay at CHORI, Hanes concurs. "Macs are safer," he says. "When we get a virus, it's because someone attached a Windows laptop to the network."

Hanes, who estimates that CHORI's hundreds of machines are evenly split between Macs and Windows, deploys Macs as his secure front line to the outside world. He has set up CHORI's mail and Web servers on OS X systems. Any malware, particularly mail-borne viruses, gets stopped there before reaching the network. "If it's touching the Internet, it's safer on a Mac," he concludes.

Most Mac technical support personnel argue that the machines are far simpler to manage than Windows boxes. For example, when Genentech went through a recent upgrade on both its Mac and Windows systems, one technician could completely upgrade six OS X machines per day, while on the Windows side, one person could complete only two or sometimes three PCs each day. And for the entire company, seven technicians handle nearly 2,500 Macintoshes.

Eighty percent of Digital Strata Inc.'s business is Windows users. Dan Fischler, president of the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based IT consultancy, estimates that one tech support person can manage 50 to 75 Macs, whereas ideally, there should be one for every 20 to 25 Windows PCs.

That's because of the high level of integration between the hardware and the software in a Mac, suggests Gary Winterboer, IT support engineer at AeroVironment Inc., an aerospace design firm in Monrovia, Calif. For example, Apple includes its Server Assistant tool, which sets up an Xserve machine with a single click. And the Server Admin tool lets users turn individual features on or off with a mouse click.

No one expects Macs to displace Windows as the desktop of choice for general-purpose computing. But Apple has deflected intense competition in its core vertical markets. And, for the first time, it's becoming a credible contender as an alternative for servers inside the data center.

The iPod Factor

Apple's recent emphasis on consumer gadgets and services such as the iPod and iTunes are boosting its position in the home computing market. According to research by Minneapolis-based financial services firm Piper Jaffray & Co., 6 percent of Windows users who bought iPods have switched to Macs, and 7 percent more plan to make the jump.

Kim Vichitrananda, a desktop support engineer at The Dallas Morning News, says the iPod helps Apple not only in the market, but with its bottom line, as it did in the most recent quarter, when Apple reported record profits. "It does tremendous things for name recognition [among] users of both platforms," she says.

And, says Stuart Wilkes, technical director of Iscentia Ltd., a Fortune 500 consultancy in Worcestershire, England, Apple's sound finances mean that "the Mac is not a risky investment anymore."

jumalian · Ladies Man Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 7625 City: san diego

RD and JamesWatts, why do you guys continually go into "pc" specific threads for the sole reason of pushing mac? how do your posts to go with mac help the creator of this thread?

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

So, what we know:

1) the Mac is great for Graphic Design and Video Editing, as well as day-to-day operations. OS/X is UNIX based which is extremely stable, but has some, but not many compatibility issues.

2) PC's can be made to be quite versatile in the Graphic Design and Video Editing realm, with some know-how. XP can be an extremely stable platform, if you have the right hardware and you do not clutter the machine with crap. They are also the business standard and universally compatible with 99.9% of everything. They are also LESS expensive if you are not a monkey who buys Sony VAIO equipment thinking for whatever reason that it is the bestest.

So, what have we learned kids?

Use whatever the hell you want, both system types can be up to the task.

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

jumalian · Ladies Man Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 7625 City: san diego

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

scott a · Ladies Man Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 9810

not hatin on mac, but i found some things kinda weird when i was glancing through the article...

apple makes servers? funny. when did this start? as of a year ago they were still using Sun servers in their cupertino location. not only that, but they were stealing parts from the Sun servers and were replacing them with crappy 3rd party parts...

and Genentech is a huge company, and they have close to a 50-50 ratio of mac's to PC's (from what ive been told, at least). i would be interested to know what type of machines they do their intensive number crunching on because my mom has only ever worked at places that use PCs. she's a scientist.

jzwake · Addict Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 801

jumalian, RD, whats the deal???

Stop with this civil disagreement and start bashing each others favorite towboat. Thats how things get solved around here. Very Happy

scott a, Mac has had servers for a year or two to my knowlege, who uses them besides universities (for the sake of making a supercomputer with their bloated donations) beats the hell out of me.
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HARE KRISHNA - ISKCON DICUSSION

jumalian · Ladies Man Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 7625 City: san diego

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

jumalian, OK I get it, I probably read more into your question then you may have intended and you're right it started as a simple PC question. I could have posted that article as a new topic and that would have been more appropriate.

jzwake, That's easy, when it comes to boats there's only Malibu! Smile

JamesWatts · Addict Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 685 City: Santa Monica

Yes. malibu's and Mac's....only way to go.

-James