ALL HELP PLEASE, need some serious input!

Judas · May 18, 2004, 11:12 PM

This is a serious matter... i'd like to GET ALL the information... personal opinions..... suggestions.. you name it... proof if you will as well...

I currently am in talks with a company that is having troubles deciding on what to use for computers.... MAC or PC ... and they also want to go the LAPTOP route...

The company deals with alot of Customers.... Digital images (scanned).... layouts and various other graphics and design

The major concern is customer capability..... they are leaning heavily on the route of MAC because they beleive that there is a major capability problem with PC to MAC File conversions (reports that JPEG's won't work if it is saved from a PC and opened on a MAC)

Obviously Adobe Photoshop and Quark are one of the major programs used (along with other ADOBE software suits such as Illistrator)

NOW, taking that into consideration.... Wireless Internet is a possibility, Reason for laptops is that they want to be able to take it anywere... say lunch as some restuarant for example... and show progress and take suggestions and whatnot...

The majority of the Customers may have MAC..... as it's "still" considered top Image Related editting... obviously with todays technology and abilities.... it fairly the same.... but i need Confirmation and some proof to back it up.... I need people that run in the same bisnesses to either say nay or yay... and any help on the matter would be greatly appreciated....

The_Neon_Cowboy · May 19, 2004, 12:07 AM

their perfectly cross compatable... the formats are the same both on pc or mac only problem is the mac file stsrm is unreadable on pc's but for example you can make an image on a mac and email it to a pc an it opens fine...

there is 3rd party software that allow macs a nd pc's to talk to eather other and on the network just fine. internet shareing works just fine too with out any added 3rd party apps though

what i reccomend is haveing mostly pc's but have a few mac's available apple pay to dallor to adobe to make the mack version of photo shop a littlebetter stuff like that that helps mac domiate the grapics desighn market... but theere is so much more pc softwre it just blows mac away all the stuff you cant use on a mac and the fact that 90% of people is useing a form of windows/pc the smaller the rest are useing linux and mac and dos and unix etc etc etc

should be fine but you have to explain it verry carefully

I have adobe everything here and quark you name it I gots it and everythin running on my and my girlfreinds pc's . She also happend to goto collage for "graphcs design"...

**dj_stick** · May 19, 2004, 12:12 AM

i agree with Neon… PC may be the best way… macs are usually very expensive for the ~same performance

Judas · May 19, 2004, 12:27 AM

that's the thing.. this computer supplier gave a deal on some MAC I-books (2 grand each) 1.2ghz, that's all i know so far about them.... who knows how much memory they have let alone other capabilities... as 2 grand seems pretty damn low for even a decent quality PC laptop... (max around here range from 3000 for just a low quality "e-mac" to 9+ )

**dj_stick** · May 19, 2004, 01:16 AM

well 1.2 ghz on a mac is quite fast… i would say check the ram specs… if its 256/512 buy em, you can always add more ram

***Zardon*** · May 19, 2004, 01:39 AM

I use both in my work and there are little to no issues with cross platform compatibility. If the mac users need to give files to PC users, they burn discs ISO 9660 format via TOAST. There is some confusion as very few mac users use PCs and will not be aware to use valid DOS extensions, so when saving files for example jpg would be .jpg, tiff would be .tif, Quarkxpress would be .qxd. - Mac embeds these into the resource fork so Mac users tend to need some tutorials before saving files for PC - the new versions of Photoshop even offer the option to save with extensions in a preference setting on the macintosh a handy option (but I like to show the mac users first WHY and what they are, so they can do it manually). The only issue when saving for PC would be FONTS, this can cause issues especially when the same font on the same platform can be a different family or even have in some cases slightly different kerning/spacing, character widths which can seriously mess up an advertisment etc. The way around this is to finalise the job on one machine, then either save with acrobat as a PDF or you can save as an EPS within QUARK then run fontincluder to vectorise all font EPS information so even when printing from PC no fonts will get lost at the RIP or vice versa.

As for PC and MAC performance and stability. let me just tell you, the G5s are great, and Mac OS X is also great but there are still serious issues with High end drum scanners and compatibilty with drivers. to this point alot of companies still rely on OS9-9.2 to drive high end scanning equipment such as sentinels or eskofots. The problem with OS 9-+ is the fact that its memory handling capabilities are attricious, memory fragmentation occurs quite heavily over time and it has no protected memory, meaning if you are running photoshop, quark, illustrator and one decides to take a fit and crash, wham, 9 times out of ten, its OS restart time - all work gone in all application, mac secret and rule of thumb, SAVE and SAVE OFTEN!. Windows XP or 2000 (any NT based windows OS) as you know has protected memory meaning, control alt delete you are safe and dry. save everything else thats open in other applications without any issues.

The PC Photoshop was in the past inferior, V4 had issues with bezier curves and several bugs and until V5.5-V6 it was always stated that the MAC would be the platform of choice. V7 and CS have changed this, the PC is now on equal ground apart from the fact the processors on PCs are faster - yes, they are. even a G5 with a dual processor wont hold its ground to a top end A64 or P4. even though Photoshop is heavily optimised for Mac I have ran quite alot of tests on filters with CMYK images over 50 megs, and the high end PCS win in almost all of them. If you look at Apples testing, then tend to run filters which value the RISC processor over the AMD or P4 counterparts to get favourable figures. all part of the PR game.

So my point is this - unless your company has 20 or 30 graphic artists who were taught on Macintoshes and loathe the PC format due to inexperience or poor education then its worthwhile putting a few MACS in the network to keep them happy and then giving them a few days crash course on file formats and how to save for PC users or bureaus and the facts on fonts, image files and dot gains. But in 2004 even for image editing, PC is now ahead - and I feel I speak with quite a background on this, I teach photoshop on both formats and made my trade on Macintoshes V1 of photoshop/pagemaker before 1990.

~~HawK~~ · May 19, 2004, 01:40 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by The_Neon_Cowboy
their perfectly cross compatable... the formats are the same both on pc or mac only problem is the mac file stsrm is unreadable on pc's but for example you can make an image on a mac and email it to a pc an it opens fine...

there is 3rd party software that allow macs a nd pc's to talk to eather other and on the network just fine. internet shareing works just fine too with out any added 3rd party apps though

what i reccomend is haveing mostly pc's but have a few mac's available apple pay to dallor to adobe to make the mack version of photo shop a littlebetter stuff like that that helps mac domiate the grapics desighn market... but theere is so much more pc softwre it just blows mac away all the stuff you cant use on a mac and the fact that 90% of people is useing a form of windows/pc the smaller the rest are useing linux and mac and dos and unix etc etc etc

should be fine but you have to explain it verry carefully

I have adobe everything here and quark you name it I gots it and everythin running on my and my girlfreinds pc's . She also happend to goto collage for "graphcs design"...

Yah it should work perfect indeed
only one thing to add, if they are going to use wireless, make sure they understand the risk of wireless computing, and only send/recieve data encrypted.

pr0digal jenius · May 19, 2004, 09:00 AM

my opinion is to go the windows route, simply because Adobe is cycling out Mac support on some fo their software and you wouldn't wanna hafta go switch out laptops in a few years when adobe quits putting out compatible products

Judas · May 19, 2004, 10:03 AM

most excellent..... so the only POSSIBLE problem with macs is if someone saves a file on a mac..... and then transfers it to pc.... and the extension is different.... it'll mess up..... and the fact that fonts may have issues....

BTW... by my understanding..... they transfer image files most of the time via JPEG or higher quality (PNG is able to be opened on mac right? would it be considered the highest quality for being able to be opened across all the various systems? )

PDF is definitely going to have to be used..... i wouldn't expect them to do much if they didn't use it as PDF is a very solid way to transfer documents without worry of "messing up"

GutterPunk · May 19, 2004, 10:50 AM

Just last year at our school, we put in a 'new' graphic design dep't. As the choice was made, PC's were among the most computers there but it was a ratio of probably 10:1 PC:Mac. As we learned, we actually did not need that many Macs, but learning was available on both. At the schools I were looking at (i wanted to do graphic design) I got offered a scholarship to UNK (University of Nebraska @ Kearny). This is where the creators of South Park went. This school is known for its graphic design dep't and is high recognized throughout the USA. They were PURE Macs. Now at UNL and University of Kansas they were Mostly PCs with some Macs. It is a tough decision but from what I have seen and experienced, i would say mostly PC but as stated keep a few macs around. Just be sure to stay with compatible software suites like illustrator, to help lower compatability issues. 1 thing about laptops tho, I myself prefer a large monitor or Dual Monitor when working w/ pshop. Laptops are nice for doing lunch presentations and etc tho, prolly may wanna keep a few desktops around too. Welp thats my 2 Cents.

Judas · May 19, 2004, 10:55 AM

so.... say get majority of PC's.. and maybe 2 macs?

Robert McClelland · May 19, 2004, 11:17 AM

I stay get a pc ram cheaper then macs ram lol

Judas · May 19, 2004, 11:33 AM

that's another thing.... i think for each laptop... a min of 512mb is a nessity.... regardless of the OS... i mean... 1GB should be used!

***Zardon*** · May 19, 2004, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Judas
they transfer image files most of the time via JPEG or higher quality (PNG is able to be opened on mac right? would it be considered the highest quality for being able to be opened across all the various systems? )

the mac can handle all the files the PC can, if you have the correct application installed (photoshop in the case of images of course, anything else is a cop out). JPEGs are universal but for high quality work they certainly arent the no1 choice, as its not loseless compression. Having a master file as a TIFF, EPS, BMP, TARGA whatever is the ideal option, with a PSD (.psd for PC) file for any layering filtering work _ again these are cross platform bearing in mind if you arent sure of fonts to rasterise any font layers for the other users). then you can outsource into lower resolution file formats, such as jpeg or whatever. I frequently get work from many people as TIFF files with LZW lossless compression, this is a decent option to use for example in cross platform sending down an ISDN line as many agencies dont have compression utilities (stuffit on the mac can open zip files but not everyone will have it). LZW with a TIFF file can half the file size with no loss in quality and you can resave once you get it to turn it off - many RIPS or imagesetters cant handle LZW compression on the printing stage and will fail the job (depends if its a level 2 or 3 postscript printer) - but its a handy option for transporting.

PNG is a decent format with the ability for transparency and was designed for the net, but its still not a "standard" with graphic bureaus.