Hey Andy, check it:

CatOne · April 24, 2007

:wink

Andy · April 24, 2007

Hey Bill:

:pissed

Sigh.

dogwood · April 27, 2007

CatOne wrote:

Looks like a pretty smokin' ride-- and I'm a PC guy through and through. Set-up like yours could convince me to jump ship though... How's it run?

noeltykay · April 27, 2007

CatOne wrote:

Hey CatOne...FYYFF!!!

ccpickre · April 27, 2007

I smell photo manipulation, check the file info

CatOne · May 2, 2007

ccpickre wrote:

I smell photo manipulation, check the file info

Nah, no manipulation. Just an older photo that I cropped to remove the background. Can't re-take the photo right now because the security update changed the dialog to say 2 x unknown CPU. Nice bug

CatOne · May 2, 2007

dogwood wrote:

Looks like a pretty smokin' ride-- and I'm a PC guy through and through. Set-up like yours could convince me to jump ship though... How's it run?

Was it Jim Carrey that said SSSSSSSSSMOKIN'! ?

It's quick. I don't have CS3 yet so I haven't put it through those paces. Waiting on CS3 but I'm getting a hook-up on it and these things take a little longer than purchasing at retail. Looking forward to it though... it sure runs Aperture real-nice-like :-)

wxwax · May 2, 2007

CatOne wrote:

Was it Jim Carrey that said SSSSSSSSSMOKIN'! ?

It's quick. I don't have CS3 yet so I haven't put it through those paces. Waiting on CS3 but I'm getting a hook-up on it and these things take a little longer than purchasing at retail. Looking forward to it though... it sure runs Aperture real-nice-like :-)

Compared to which machine does it feel fast? A four core Mac Pro?

Nikolai · May 2, 2007

wxwax wrote:

Compared to which machine does it feel fast? A four core Mac Pro?

To an HP graphing calculator?

JohnR · May 2, 2007

Nice! Which video card did you get in it?

CatOne · May 3, 2007

wxwax wrote:

Compared to which machine does it feel fast? A four core Mac Pro?

Yeah, it's a fair bit quicker than the Quad 2.5 GHz G5 it replaced.

Oh, and about 20 dB quieter as well.

It has the X1900XT graphics card... as that's WAY better for Aperture and Motion than the stock 7300GT. For Photoshop it won't be any faster, given Photoshop doesn't use the GPU at all.

CatOne · May 3, 2007

Nikolai wrote:

To an HP graphing calculator?

It would probably run star explorer so fast the photos would be tagged before you hit the button... if you were wont to disgrace it with that gnarsty OS

Nikolai · May 4, 2007

CatOne wrote:

It would probably run star explorer so fast the photos would be tagged before you hit the button... if you were wont to disgrace it with that gnarsty OS

Man, get the Parallels, get S*E - and I'll give you a free upgrade:-)

wxwax · May 4, 2007

CatOne wrote:

It has the X1900XT graphics card... as that's WAY better for Aperture and Motion than the stock 7300GT. For Photoshop it won't be any faster, given Photoshop doesn't use the GPU at all.

How about for Lightroom?

CatOne · May 4, 2007

wxwax wrote:

How about for Lightroom?

Lightroom? Whassat?!

Not sure yet. I'm waiting on my copy of that. I still prefer Aperture (given it's what I've used, and I got a lot of time to look at both on the Antarctica trip), but as I have a few friends at Adobe it's worth it for me to get LR at the employee price as a hedge

I could probably try the eval version on this machine while I wait. I suspect it's quick though.

CS3 looks like will be arriving for me in the next week or so. Should be fun.

wxwax · May 4, 2007

Thanks. My inquiry is mostly academic, with a bit of masochism thrown in. I'll probably buy a 2.66 Mac Pro soon, and was wondering how much faster the Octo was for photo work (not video.) Your note on the graphics card caught my attention, as I'd been under the impression that for stills, the card didn't make much difference.

DavidTO · May 4, 2007

wxwax wrote:

Thanks. My inquiry is mostly academic, with a bit of masochism thrown in. I'll probably buy a 2.66 Mac Pro soon, and was wondering how much faster the Octo was for photo work (not video.) Your note on the graphics card caught my attention, as I'd been under the impression that for stills, the card didn't make much difference.

Aperture makes heavy use of the graphics card. That aside, you can safely not worry about the graphics card. It's a mark against Aperture, IMO.

wxwax · May 4, 2007

DavidTO wrote:

Aperture makes heavy use of the graphics card. That aside, you can safely not worry about the graphics card. It's a mark against Aperture, IMO.

Thanks, David. Against my better judgment, I ordered a copy of Lightroom yesterday.

CatOne · May 8, 2007

wxwax wrote:

Thanks, David. Against my better judgment, I ordered a copy of Lightroom yesterday.

You'll like it -- it's a good piece of software. On the Antarctica trip all the pros (Reichmann, Resnick, Schewe, Caponigro, Atkinson) were involved in the development of LR. I got to see them use it, and it works very well. Its strength is keywording and editing.

Aperture's organizational features (stacks, etc.) are far ahead of Lightroom. LR does have stacks, but they're just nowhere near as advanced as Apertures. But LR's editing is quite good, and some things like the targeted adjustment tool are fantastic. LR finally got the healing and clone stamp stuff, and it's very nice. The only functionality in LR that still stinks from an editing perspective is sharpening. It's just not good right now -- Aperture's edge sharpening is far ahead. That said, I believe LR will be getting the Photokit Sharpener tools integrated into 1.1 so that should improve.

Sharpening aside, the quality of images you can get out of Aperture or LR are now pretty similar. But the tools in LR will be more familiar to a Photoshop user -- they have curves (and curves that are superior to those in Photoshop CS2 (CS3 is better) with info on all the zones and the TAT -- where Aperture has levels with quarter tone sliders -- and the darned sliders I'm *still* not totally comfortable with after 1.5 years. I can get decent results but I'm always a bit in the dark about how I actually am getting what I want out of the tool. Curves, while complicated, are at least well documented

W.W. Webster · May 8, 2007

wxwax wrote:

Against my better judgment, I ordered a copy of Lightroom yesterday.

Good move, I don't think you'll be disappointed!

ccpickre · May 8, 2007

20dB quieter? I have 2.3 Duo and mine is fairly silent.

CatOne · May 8, 2007

ccpickre wrote:

20dB quieter? I have 2.3 Duo and mine is fairly silent.

The Quad 2.5 G5 was loud. A lot louder than the dual 2.5 it replaced. It had a fairly constant hum. It may have been the gigantic Delco-manufactured liquid cooling apparatus -- I'm not sure. I'd say it's *easily* 15 dB difference... and it could well be 20.

I don't know if the dual 2.3 is liquid cooled? In fact that only uses a single CPU package, right? It's a dual core processor? A lot less going on in that box than in the Quad G5.

ian408 · May 8, 2007

i priced a machine out the other day....almost passed out from the sticker
shock...

DavidTO · May 8, 2007

ian408 wrote:

i priced a machine out the other day....almost passed out from the sticker
shock...

? Why? What was in the package?

ian408 · May 8, 2007

DavidTO wrote:

? Why? What was in the package?

2x 3G dual core, 2x 500g drives, 4g memory. standard graphics, wireless
kybd/mouse, wireless card.

DavidTO · May 8, 2007

ian408 wrote:

2x 3G dual core, 2x 500g drives, 4g memory. standard graphics, wireless
kybd/mouse, wireless card.

Oh. K. More bang than you need, most likely. The 2.66 core duo should be fine!

And a lot cheaper. But it's always fun to look in the showroom and run the numbers.

ian408 · May 9, 2007

DavidTO wrote:

Oh. K. More bang than you need, most likely. The 2.66 core duo should be fine! And a lot cheaper. But it's always fun to look in the showroom and run the numbers.

Yeah. The 2.6 is probably more than I need but I'm looking 3yrs out too.

Not to mention, the disks and memory are available for way less money
elsewhere.

ccpickre · May 9, 2007

CatOne wrote:

The Quad 2.5 G5 was loud. A lot louder than the dual 2.5 it replaced. It had a fairly constant hum. It may have been the gigantic Delco-manufactured liquid cooling apparatus -- I'm not sure. I'd say it's *easily* 15 dB difference... and it could well be 20.

I don't know if the dual 2.3 is liquid cooled? In fact that only uses a single CPU package, right? It's a dual core processor? A lot less going on in that box than in the Quad G5.

Yes. I am ashamed :cry

And I thin kit's just a fan :cry I'm not worthy :cry

wxwax · May 9, 2007

ian408 wrote:

Yeah. The 2.6 is probably more than I need but I'm looking 3yrs out too.

Not to mention, the disks and memory are available for way less money
elsewhere.

You know more than I about these machines.

But here's where my thinking is at the moment: there's not much point in going top shelf and thinking three years out, because by then even the cheap machines will outpace a three year old design. So unless one needs super-duper power right now, a low to medium price machine, with an expected lifespan of 2-4 years, is the way to go. Sounds insane, but there it is.

So I'm looking at a refurb 2.66 (suddenly scarer than hen's teeth) with after-market memory and hard drives. Even that's going to be more than I want to spend. But I went the cheap route last time, and I want to try the middle road this time.

DavidTO · May 9, 2007

Sid,

That makes sense to me.

ian408 · May 9, 2007

Nothing wrong with your thinking Sid. My basis is watching what's come out in the last little while whittle away at performance. I suppose one could "upgrade" at a later time but that is often throwing good money after bad--ie; you're at the end of the useful life and trying to spark up the old ghost with a hardware refresh.

The really hard part for me is that I understand how performance works in the windoze world but not mac. In other words, the windows/linux community is well beyond 2.6G processors (we are buying 3.0G for blades--sometimes 3.2 but that is rare).

Hey Andy, check it:

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