Basically I've been working on a hyperthreaded pentium 4 (2.4ghz) pc for a few years now, with 2gigs of ram. At our school we use Mac Pro's with two 2.5ghz or so dual core cpus + 5gigs of ram. In general the performance of Adobe CS3 suite seems to be the same on my Windows XP computer, and on the Mac Pro, so I'm wondering what would work the best for me?
I'm kind of interested in an iMac (24" with 3.06ghz, 8800GS and 4gigs of ram), but don't know how it would hold up over a long periods of time. Would this computer be sufficient for me? I basically surf internet, type documents, use Adobe CS3 (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), and play fps games such as Battlefield 2 from time to time (looking at getting Diablo 3 when it comes out).
Would the iMac be a good long term purchase? By long term I mean would it last me for three or more years? I've had my current system for close to five years, and only reason I'm upgrading is because I want to switch over to an Apple system since it's easier to work when getting work ready for print, etc.
I'm also interested in a second system which would be a portable - a MacBook. Would it be good enough for doing presentations of my work when I visit clients, along with minor editing / revision of work on the spot? I'm assuming that since the processors are better than what I have in my current system that it should be more than enough with 4gigs of ram?
Why do so many people who use Macs stress that you need tons of CPU power (Xeon) and tons of ram (5gigs+)? I don't usually work with large files, and I've only seen my computer drop below 500megs free few times over the years that I've worked on it..
I'm kind of interested in an iMac (24" with 3.06ghz, 8800GS and 4gigs of ram), but don't know how it would hold up over a long periods of time. Would this computer be sufficient for me? I basically surf internet, type documents, use Adobe CS3 (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), and play fps games such as Battlefield 2 from time to time (looking at getting Diablo 3 when it comes out).
Would the iMac be a good long term purchase? By long term I mean would it last me for three or more years? I've had my current system for close to five years, and only reason I'm upgrading is because I want to switch over to an Apple system since it's easier to work when getting work ready for print, etc.
I'm also interested in a second system which would be a portable - a MacBook. Would it be good enough for doing presentations of my work when I visit clients, along with minor editing / revision of work on the spot? I'm assuming that since the processors are better than what I have in my current system that it should be more than enough with 4gigs of ram?
Why do so many people who use Macs stress that you need tons of CPU power (Xeon) and tons of ram (5gigs+)? I don't usually work with large files, and I've only seen my computer drop below 500megs free few times over the years that I've worked on it..