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[DMickey28]

I was looking at systems with 3GB or 4GB and most are expandable up to 8GB. We are also looking at HP and Dell.

 

[MICKEY88]

would you consider a factory recertified if it was a really good deal....

 

[handicap18]

I think most PC's with Intel Pentiums are dual core, there are also a bunch of Quad Core, but I don't think you get as much out of that. I have the Quad Core 2.66 mHz with 2 350 internal hard drives and 3GB ram upgradeable to 8. It runs great for me, though I probably will up my ram sometime next year. My camera files are twice they size now as they were with my previous camera so the extra RAM will help.

You may also want an exteranl HD. I have 2. When I download the images from my memory card I have them downloaded to 1 of the internal HD's AND 1 of the external HD's. Every month or so I also send a 3rd backup copy to the 2nd external HD along with making DVD copies. So you'll want a DVD burner too. Having dual monitor outputs is nice to have as well. I use a 22" widescreen monitor, but I also send a signal out of the 32" HDTV in the living room for easy viewing for the family (also works nicely when you want to watch video's from the internet, especially from ABC.com and other networks that have full video and/or HD programing availble to watch online)

 

[DMickey28]

would you consider a factory recertified if it was a really good deal....

Possibly.

I think most PC's with Intel Pentiums are dual core, there are also a bunch of Quad Core, but I don't think you get as much out of that. I have the Quad Core 2.66 mHz with 2 350 internal hard drives and 3GB ram upgradeable to 8. It runs great for me, though I probably will up my ram sometime next year. My camera files are twice they size now as they were with my previous camera so the extra RAM will help.

You may also want an exteranl HD. I have 2. When I download the images from my memory card I have them downloaded to 1 of the internal HD's AND 1 of the external HD's. Every month or so I also send a 3rd backup copy to the 2nd external HD along with making DVD copies. So you'll want a DVD burner too. Having dual monitor outputs is nice to have as well. I use a 22" widescreen monitor, but I also send a signal out of the 32" HDTV in the living room for easy viewing for the family (also works nicely when you want to watch video's from the internet, especially from ABC.com and other networks that have full video and/or HD programing availble to watch online)

What brand do you have? That sounds similar to a lot that I have been looking at. Is there a big difference between the AMD Athlon Dual-Core and the Intel? Is it mostly just brands? One I was looking at is a AMD Athlon X2 4600 Dual-Core, 500GB ATA hard drive and 3GB DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 8GB, along with a bunch of other mumbo jumbo!

When you buy an HP or Dell or any other one for that matter, can you add HD's or anything? I would probably also get an external HD to store all the pics on. Right now they are a jumbled mess on my laptop and I'd like to clean it up and organize it on the desktop. My pictures currently take up 14GB (at least that is what it says under the file properties!!)

 

[dburg30]

The prices of the external drives that are great for storage and such are dropping like rocks. I think a 1TB drive is now less then $200, probably even cheaper from newegg. For photos, videos and stuff I think those are great.

 

[YesDear]

If you have an apple store near you, you owe it to yourself to check them out. for all the things mentioned, an Imac has most of them and if you want it for pictures, etc, I think there is no better.

I still have a pc at home but also have an Imac and a mac laptop. When the pc dies, I am not certain I will get a new one.

 

[annnewjerz]

If you have an apple store near you, you owe it to yourself to check them out. for all the things mentioned, an Imac has most of them and if you want it for pictures, etc, I think there is no better.

I still have a pc at home but also have an Imac and a mac laptop. When the pc dies, I am not certain I will get a new one.

Or even if you don't have an apple store near you, you should at least go somewhere like Best Buy or Circuit City to have a look, especially with lots of great Black Friday sales coming up and -if you are someone who likes to purchase things on 0% financing, Best Buy usually has a good deal going with 2 years interest free.

I love MACs. I have used them a lot in the past and when it was time to get a new laptop, I tried my hardest to convince DH to get a MAC...he wanted none of it, thought it would be too difficult a transition to make so we got a Gateway. It's nice, but I think the photo editing and video editing capabilities that come standard with the MACs much better than those that come standard with any PC with a Windows OS.

 

[AbsolutLaney]

Mac is expensive..You need a pc with large hard drive..I think you can have a look at Dell and HP.
How about this one:
Dell Inspiron 13 13.3in 1.86GHz 3GB 250GB Laptop..

 

[boBQuincy]

Mac hardware = PC hardware, it's all the same parts. The difference is in the software and the price, and I can't see paying the extra $$$.

For a photo PC you are best off building one. It should have a fast processor, separate system and application (and scratch) drives, a decent video card (but not a 3d gaming card), and lots of RAM, although I see little chance of using more than 3 or 4 GB for photo work.
A good power supply, such as PC Power & Cooling helps keep the system stable.

Building a system does not mean you have to do the work yourself, a place such as Puget Systems will assemble a PC to your specifications. This way you get what you want without paying for what you don't want.

 

[ukcatfan]

Wouldn't going with a Mac also mean that you would have to re-invest in expensive software that you already have for a pc? You might want to wait until the next version of Windows comes out. It is already being talked about and seems to be an improvement over Vista.

 

[fitzperry]

Wouldn't going with a Mac also mean that you would have to re-invest in expensive software that you already have for a pc? You might want to wait until the next version of Windows comes out. It is already being talked about and seems to be an improvement over Vista.

I'm a recent Mac convert as well, and most of the software I use came with both Windows and Mac versions (Capture NX, Lightroom, etc.) I haven't had to buy anything new. Not only that, Capture NX runs much better (i.e., faster and it doesn't crash) on my Macbook than it did on my pc, which had a faster processor. I haven't used LR much since my switch, but my brief experience with it suggests a similar result. IMO, the Mac OS is worth the extra $$.

 

[ukcatfan]

I'm a recent Mac convert as well, and most of the software I use came with both Windows and Mac versions (Capture NX, Lightroom, etc.) I haven't had to buy anything new. Not only that, Capture NX runs much better (i.e., faster and it doesn't crash) on my Macbook than it did on my pc, which had a faster processor. I haven't used LR much since my switch, but my brief experience with it suggests a similar result. IMO, the Mac OS is worth the extra $$.

What about the people that purchased by download? Are they allowed to download the trial in Mac and then enter the registration code to make it work? I am not saying you have the answers, I just want to throw that out for those interested b/c I do not know.

While it is all out there for the OP, why not also consider Linux? I would say it is more stable than Win or Mac. There might not be the software available for it though.

 

[Golf4food]

Mac hardware = PC hardware, it's all the same parts. The difference is in the software and the price, and I can't see paying the extra $$$.

For a photo PC you are best off building one. It should have a fast processor, separate system and application (and scratch) drives, a decent video card (but not a 3d gaming card), and lots of RAM, although I see little chance of using more than 3 or 4 GB for photo work.
A good power supply, such as PC Power & Cooling helps keep the system stable.

Building a system does not mean you have to do the work yourself, a place such as Puget Systems will assemble a PC to your specifications. This way you get what you want without paying for what you don't want.

Parts is parts but my experience says the iMac parts run more stably and I have fewer problems than on those Windows parts...

Also, there are two ways you can run Windows on an iMac - as a straight PC via a separate boot system or in parallel via either Parallels or VMWare Fusion (I use Fusion) - I can run WinXP and OSX at the same time, run programs in each, and have no performance issues in either. What few programs I need that don't run on OSX I use in XP, everything else just works better on the Mac.

Also, the Apple website has refurbished iMacs that are cheaper than brand new and just as good (completely reconditioned and same warranty). Ours is a refurb, actually. I priced out building a scratch PC and even if I built it myself there was only a small price difference between a tricked out scratch PC and a iMac, and the iMac comes with a very nice monitor included, takes up a lot less space, is a ton quieter... I can't think of one thing I liked better about PCs and I had always been a PC guy. Wish I had switched to Mac sooner.

 

[fitzperry]

What about the people that purchased by download? Are they allowed to download the trial in Mac and then enter the registration code to make it work? I am not saying you have the answers, I just want to throw that out for those interested b/c I do not know.

Good question. You're right, I don't have the answer

While it is all out there for the OP, why not also consider Linux? I would say it is more stable than Win or Mac. There might not be the software available for it though.

My dh is a Linux guy. His view is that Linux is the best OS, followed by Mac, with Microsoft a distant third. Though I've seen him eyeing my Macbook with envy lately, so maybe he's thinking of altering that ranking. Unfortunately, most of the software we use isn't available for Linux. Dh did find some free photo editor that he uses on occasion, but I think it's pretty limited in terms of its features.

 

[MICKEY88]

I just bought this one about a month ago, it's factory recertified, I bought a 2 year aquare trade waqrranty for it, I had a 50% off coupon so the warranty cost me 60 dollars.. the cheapest I found the pc new, was $1200


http://www.ecost.com/Detail/Desktops/Hewlett-Packard/KQ498AARABA/42148071.aspx?navid=155438718

I also picked up a 22 inch monitor from tiger direct for 169 with a 3 year warranty

 

[ukcatfan]

My dh is a Linux guy. His view is that Linux is the best OS, followed by Mac, with Microsoft a distant third. Though I've seen him eyeing my Macbook with envy lately, so maybe he's thinking of altering that ranking. Unfortunately, most of the software we use isn't available for Linux. Dh did find some free photo editor that he uses on occasion, but I think it's pretty limited in terms of its features.

There should be no problem finding a good editor. The GIMP is great. It does almost everything that the average PS user needs, and for free. It is not all that user friendly though, especially when it comes to doing anything in a batch. The holdup would likely be in the RAW processing software.

 

[alan]

Given that you are going to be going for a machine with a lot of RAM, I would recommend that you go for a 64-bit operating system.

Basically what that means is that applications, if correctly written, can gain access to much more of your computer's memory at a time. This seeds up operations that require a lot of memory (eg editing large photographs with lots of layers).

My own preferences would be to avoid anything Unix-related (Linux, Macintosh) like the plague.

JMHO

regards,
/alan

 

[boBQuincy]

A couple of our board members mentioned they would prefer to see non-HDR images of some I took last week. HEre is what I came up with:

This is the nominal exposure of the set

This obviously is the -2 stop exposure

And the +2 stop exposure

After a little tweaking, although I would probably do more like lighten the foreground.

and the processed HDR

As I do more HDRs I tend to use a lighter touch and this one may be a little over the top but it is one that gets the most comments.
Ok, let's have your thoughts!

 

[°O°Joe]

I prefer the end result (HDR) as to me it looks the most like it would if you were standing there looking at it. However, I would layer the "tweaked" version (2nd to last) photo over the HDR, mask it and brush the highlights to use the clock and some of the lights on the upper half of the building. The clock especially looks dark to me on the HDR. Probably being picky, but that's the only thing that stood out to me.

 

[Groucho]

Your HDR gave the flower Mickey demon eyes!

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of HDRs, no offense to those who do like them... this one is tough as even the original exposure looks a bit unnatural!

FWIW, my inclination would be to take the original photo, bump up the contrast a bit, give it some fill light or curves adjustment to bring out some detail in the lower area, and maybe even bring back the saturation/vibrance a little (as I think that's what's making it look a bit unnatural.)

IMHO, the final shot is just "too much" - too much orange in the lights, too much blue in the sky (I'm thinking the sky was basically white when seen in person), etc... It makes me wonder what it would look like as a b/w! That would remove the garish colors while retaining the extra dynamic range. Pulling back pretty heavily on the saturation would probably help, too, as another option.