what computer do you guys use?

The acer you linked to is at a good price point, plenty of stuff for your money.

Looking at the specs price isn't the only difference. The Mac does have a slightly faster processor (1.83 vs 1.66) and slightly better video card (x1600 vs x1400) but it has only 2/3 of the Hard drive space (80 vs 120) and the biggest flaw, only 512Mb RAM vs 2Gb in the Acer. Considering the Mac is $2000 having only 512Mb of RAM is laughable. Get the Acer.

Have you considered the Toshiba laptops? They have some great price points considering the amount of stuff you get with it, and the screens on some are just amazing.

I took a peek at a few Qosmio's in Circuit City yesterday...very impressive. Although, all but one seemed to all have but 64mb "shared" video memory. The other was a very impressive 256 Nvidia.

I had a Toshiba P10 before going all mac, it had an awesome 15 screen with a native resolution of 1920x1440 which for some people is aweful because they can't read things, but for viewing photos it rocked... but it was windows... and windows breaks a lot...

as per the comment about the mac only shipping with 512mb or ram... just buy some more, not from apple though. an extra gig is stupidly cheap.

I still say apple all the way =)

I have a dell 6100D Laptop that I do a lot of my editing on, and a Dell GX270 and a Homegrown Sempron 64bit system all work great for me, and all are very different machines...

Go with the Mac. Great operating system, I have no complaints.

I use exclusively the Canary 2000. It however is a desktop that is built from other peoples junk. I use this at work for games and internet. It has a Athlon 1.2 gighz and 256 mem with a ge force 64 meg agp card. The only thing I bought for this machine is a new power supply. The name was awarded because the I found a old case and gutted it, left the sides off and painted it bright yellow. Then I added a custom power switch and the rest of the parts and a co-worker made me a CANARY 2000 sticker. If I bring my camera in I'll post a picture of it.

I bought a 15" PowerBook not long after the new Aluminum models came out back in 2003. I still use it today, and it's all the computer I need for Photoshop and InDesign CS. I've had to bump the RAM from 512 MB to 1.24 GB, but other than that, it's a great computer and I've had no complaints with Apple's service plan.

I like that it fits in a camera bag without being too bulky (although it is a substantial portion of the weight), and for a computer that is as "pretty" as the PowerBook, it's taken a lot of abuse over the 2+ years I've had it.

And then there's OS X. 'nuff said.

That's my point exactly.

Sure you can add more. Cheapest Newegg has from a decent brand is $106 for a 1Gb stick. So to hit 2Gb of RAM, which is important for photo editing, you are now looking at spending $712 more than the Acer Laptop. That's a hell of a premium to get a different OS.

Should get a Linux box and just use Gimp. There is not enough Linux love in this forum.

Citizensmith wrote:
Sure you can add more. Cheapest Newegg has from a decent brand is $106 for a 1Gb stick. So to hit 2Gb of RAM, which is important for photo editing, you are now looking at spending $712 more than the Acer Laptop. That's a hell of a premium to get a different OS.

Should get a Linux box and just use Gimp. There is not enough Linux love in this forum.

There's also money invested in software for the OS X platform that was a factor in my case. That, and I don't really have the patience to mess with Linux. If I'm going to spend that kind of money on a computer, it'd better "just work."

The OP doesn't have that problem, from the sound of it.

On the other note, it looks like RAM prices have gone down... I may have to bump it up to 2 GB before too long.

ooooh, linux, man do i miss linux . hated Gimp though

I used Linux fairly exclusively for nearly ten years. I finally bought a Mac...

Still use Solaris every day, though.

It's the piece of mind premium... what was announced today, a HUGE hole in internet exploder (IE) and half the people in the world that don't know how to use a computer are going to get infected with a new virus/worm that will happoly hop back and forth from winblows user to winblows user

I like my mac and it does everything I would want of it. You pay a premium for a notebook of any flavour though. A desktop machine is much more upgradeable and much cheaper to buy.

I personally would not buy a "pc" mac at the moment. By the time they are able to run the Adobe software natively, there will be second generation machines around.

This is one of those times where I am sure I don't want to look at upgrading for at least twelve months until it settles down. Those times don't come up very often and it's a nice feeling that I won't be tempted for the immediate future.

A personal computer is just that, personal. Just because I use one, certainly doesn't mean that you will like it. I have always used macs and that is probably why I like them. The PC guys will have the same experience.

If you have any bought software already, that can make the difference. Other than that, buy a modern, well specced machine and you will be just fine.

Graham