G5 replacement

[GreggVicik]

Hello all. I have a G5 with 2-2.5GHz processors and 5.5GB's of memory. It does all I need it to do and I am very happy with the speed. Most of my work involves larger files, more than 100MB's, in PhotoShop. Not doing anything cosmic, just normal dust spotting, healing brush etc.

I would like to get a new Mac to add to our internal network. It will be used for the same as the G5. My question is: How much difference will I see in speed with a new iMac with 4GB's of memory? I am not worried about exact color with the iMac, I can handle that with the G5 set-up. I am just looking for an additional machine to handle the PhotoShop cleaning and such. I am limited with space, so the iMac fits but I need to know if it would be powerful enough to handle larger files.

Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Gregg

[Martin_Doudoroff]

Gregg: if all you plan to do is "dust spotting" and you don't plan to rack up dozens of layers, you'll probably do just fine with a 24" iMac. Definitely get at least 4GB of RAM—I think that may be the current minimum (yay!). In another few months, you'll probably be able to get 2x4GB modules for much less than you currently can, so I'd try to avoid paying for 8GB right now.

If you haven't already, I also recommend you familiarize yourself with Lloyd Chamber's Macintosh Performance Guide. Some of his recommendations may be overkill for you, but at least you'll know exactly what the issues are.

[GreggVicik]

Thanks Martin, I do use many layers from time to time, but there again not for the simple stuff like dust spotting. At most I may have 2 or 3 layers while I am cleaning images, but most times just the single layer.

At some point I will need to look into a new Mac tower to replace the G5, but my scanners software does not work on the new Intel Mac. For ONLY a few thousand dollars I can purchase a software upgrade that will run on the Intel Mac. Oh, yeah, what a deal that is...

Anyway, for now I just need to add a new machine for light PhotoShop work and it needs to have a small footprint, since space is also an issue.

Gregg

[GreggVicik]

Well, we did get the iMac. Again, because of limited space, we got the 20" iMac, rather than the 24" model. With that said, we may be returning it. Although I do not need the display to be "picture perfect" we do need the back light to be even from top to bottom. It seems that the 20" iMac model has issues and is darker at the top of the display and lighter at the bottom. I called Apple support and they have never heard of this before now, yet on the Apple site in the forum section, there are quite a few topics about it. The 24" model has issues of its own.

Other than the display issue, the iMac does everything we need it to do. Sad to see what could be a great computer suffer from something like this.