if you are asking about cs3 and lightroom being functional on this computer the answer is yes. Up till two month ago I was running both on a powerbook 1.4 gig g4 processor with only 16 megs video ram.
was it slow? yes
did it cause me to take a lot of time waiting for pics in lightroom? yes
could I do what I needed to? always
Realize that getting this machine is a stopgap solution for you. It will be faster then the current setup you have but you will be wanting to replace it soon enough. If you haven't already gotten it by the time you read this you may want to think about how long you can go before you NEED to replace your current machine and start saving up. If you already bought it... welcome to the dark side my friend; enjoy the mac. It will be better then any PC you could have gotten and you may find that the summer is too soon to NEED the upgrade and wait till a new processor version comes out then use the imac as a backup
Nic Pyle wrote:
You can pick up a refurbed 20 inch iMac from apple for $999. I'm pretty sure it would smoke the G5. I think you should pick up the G5 for $500 because thats a good deal, turn around and sell it on ebay for a profit and pick up the imac. Of course on the other had I've heard the 20 inch screen isn't very good for photography. Its a hard decision, I guess the 1.6 would work though.
That is a good deal on the 20" iMac refurb. I just bought a 24" iMac refurb and am extremely happy with it. Don't know what you mean by the screen not being good for photography in the 20" model. Have had no trouble editing photos on mine and would assume the 20" would give no problems either.
Craig B. wrote:
That is a good deal on the 20" iMac refurb. I just bought a 24" iMac refurb and am extremely happy with it. Don't know what you mean by the screen not being good for photography in the 20" model. Have had no trouble editing photos on mine and would assume the 20" would give no problems either.
The new 20" screen is a TN panel (6 bit color depth) and not up to the standards a photographer should expect. The 24" is an IPS panel like all the previous iMacs.
Have three years experience iwth 1.6ghz g5 tower, 4 gbs ram, and good graphics card, and it works great with cs2, but lightroom and cs3 were so slow that I sold it and bought a mini, which did smoke the g5, and now I run a imac and laptop both intel, and they continually prove how slow the g5 was, not just slow, but it would lag and stall often.
Go for it, for what you intend to do it will do what you want, step up to something bigger when you have the experience of this one and by that time you will know what you want. I stepped up from a dual 800 G4 to a dual 1.8 G5 (yep I know it's faster than the 1.6 single he's looking at) a few years ago, and with memory as cheap as it is and you can buy used memory for the G5 for peanuts.
Anyway, for 500 bucks take the deal that is in front of you rather than to look for something you can't afford. I still have the G5 and although it won't blow your socks off it will still perform and I can deliver images that I work on in 16 bits from the 1Ds Mark II without going nuts. I also have a MacBook Pro 2.33, both have 2 gigs of RAM and there isn't a huge difference between them, a single processor will be slower but it's still a Mac, and I'll work on a slow Mac rather than any PC any day.
I'd say buy it and sell it on craigslist for a profit... then buy a used 20 inch imac-- the previous, more chunky version that has a great screen-- on craigslist as well.
