Little poll... are u a windows or a mac user ?

[Pedro Oliveira]

--
Pedro Oliveira - Portugal
Pentax user (all formats) since 1984
AOHC member nº 246
http://picasaweb.google.com/popentax

 

[edhannon]

--
Ed Hannon
http://www.pbase.com/edhannon

 

[drumhurrin]

Well, I can only speak for the prices in the US when I consider them reasonable. My guess is that the majority of the difference in prices in Lithuania is from taxes. Obviously, any computer will be a substantial investment in a country where the per capita income is significantly less than we have here in the US.

In Mexico, Macs often cost 25% to 50% more, most of which is from import taxes.

But here in the US, to be sure, there is less and less of a price difference in the computers. On top of it, if you price the various options for Windows OS, the prices range from $200 to $500, depending in which features you want crippled in your OS and if you are getting an upgrade or all the features. Mac OS X is priced at $129 (but can be found for $99 or a five pack for under $200) -- no upgrade pricing, no gimmicky versions, just one flat price. And THAT is a bargain compared to Windows.

What about $3300 for MacPro, $1500 for cheapest iMac, $1550 for
cheapest MacBook and $2700 for cheapest MacBook Pro? And consider
the fact that Apple sells (in fact -- tries to sell) it's hardware
for prices above in country where average monthly salary is ~$500.
So, aren't those prices ridiculous?

--
Edvinas

 

[MacTech]

MacBook Pro and Mac Pro with iPhoto, Photoshop and LightRoom.

 

[scheimpfloogie]

Both that is, serious work goes to the Mac. I feel its more reliable.

 

[rmarquez]

http://www.cinepaint.org/

--
Body: K100D
Lens inventory: DA 18-55, DA 40, DA 50-200
LBA when my local shop obtains more product: DA 21, DA 70
When available: DA * 16-50/2.8

Yes, Cinepaint produces great results, the best of any tool available in Linux that I have tried. I use it with it Adobe color profiles (available for Linux for free from Adobe). I am very happy with the way my images look after processing them with Cinepaint. However, it has a lot of quirks. Fortunately, there are more and more options appearing in Linux all the time. Of course there is Bibble, which many here report liking very much. I haven't tried it yet. A few other alternatives are DigiKam, Krita (a non free product, but with a growing and happy user base), Pixel (not free), Lightzone (free only for Linux users), and last but not least, Picasa. Also, there are a number of Windows grpahics programs that run very well under WINE, such as Raw Shooter Essentials and the FastStone Image Viewer.

So, in answer to the OP, I am neither.[/U]

 

[doro]

Everyone company I worked for used DOS\Windows OS. Some gave me company laptops and always Microsoft Operating Systems. So it just migrated home with me. Heard nice things about Apples for photo and video but my appitude has been programed Windows.

Dave D.

 

[Grant Hutchins]

G5 PPC, adobe design products (Photoshop CS2, pre-oredered CS3 for photo work). I don't use iPhoto since moving to DSLR.

 

[rmarquez]

And what about Color management in Linux? As far as I understand it
is close to non-existent in Linux, also you can forget about
hardware monitor calibration...

Correct me if I am wrong.

--
Edvinas

I use Adobe's color profiles for Linux, but there are other options as well. As for color calibration, check out this link:

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/02/07/2244242

 

[wavefunc]

Just wondering... with what system are doing the PP of your pentax
photos ?

Up to last sunday I was a dedicated PC user, own multiple laptops
under windows OS from 98 to XP...

I was a PC user until about two months ago. I've not regretting the switch to Mac one bit. I'm very glad I did.

So I tried the "famous" iPhoto, but it does not handle the RAW
files of the K10D (neither PEF nor DNG).

You need to have OSX version 10.4.9 for the K10D RAW files to work anywhere on the machine. It's the most recent OS update.

iPhoto is garbage for serious photo organizing or editing. It's made for people who want to just make slide shows and photo albums, and don't care much about how files are organized.

I spent the extra to get Aperture, and I personally love it. I have Photoshop CS2 as well, and Aperture can integrate nicely with it (in Aperture, I select "open in external editor" and the photo comes up in CS2. When I close, the edited version is back in Aperture!) but I only use that once in a great while for the things that Aperture can't do. Aperture handles levels, colors, exposure, white balance, highlights and shadows, sharpening, cropping, spot patching, and basic noise reduction. I don't often need any more than that.

 

[aponsin]

Wouhahh what a popular thread...

Thanks for all the sharing, and my apology for forgetting to mention Linux/Unix/BSD/Solaris/etc... users

Alex

 

[gazonk]

It's not that. I just happened to get a lemon. That's not my
problem with them, with every electronic appliance there are some
that'll come off the production line screwy. My problem is the way
customer service deals with the problem. It's just not worth the
hassle...

Hmm. I've bought - for myself, my boss, and my family - a total of 8 iBooks, PowerBooks, MacBooks and MacBook Pros over the last 3-4 years. 3 of them were bad, but my experience with customer service was quite good - I got new machines after several repair attempts. In the first case, my son's iBook G3/900 - a well known 'bad vintage' - was replaced with an iBook G4/1Ghz - since the G3 was no longer in production, in the second case, my wife's iBook was replaced immediately after purchase because of a faulty trackpad, in the third case, my MacBook (bought the day it was released, too early, probably...) was finally replaced with another MacBook a few weeks ago (and I then got the new version).

So, as with most other things, YMMV with Apple Customer Care...

 

[rmarquez]

I'll stick to Windows XP and when XP becomes obsolete I'll
switch to Linux because direction taken by Microsoft with Vista is
not for me.

--
Edvinas

I assume that you have already tried Linux. If not, doing so is very easy. Just download a CD image for one or two popular distributions, burn the image into a CD, and boot your machine with the CD. I recommend PCLinuxOS, SimplyMepis, and Ubuntu, in that order.

You can move to Linux now and continue using XP for those programs that you need and that do not run in Linux. There are several ways to do this:

-Dual boot. The tricky part is making room in your hard drive for it. Linux comes with programs that will resize your Windows partition and allow you to make room for Linux. I have done it two times, and fortunately, both times it worked flawlessly. However, there are no guaranties, and there is a chance that you will loose some data. If you do decide to go that way make sure to defrag your Windows file system thoroughly before doing so. A probably safer option is to use a program like Partition Magic to do this step. But, and even safer way is to simply add another hard drive to your computer and install Linux there. That route is very easy.

-Transfer your XP installation into a Virtual Machine and let Linux take over your hard drive. VMware works very well for this as you can see here:



Yes, that is XP and Vista running simultaneously under Linux (using Beryl).

This is not too hard to do. VMware has a tool that helps you convert your existing XP installation int a VM very easily:

http://www.howtoforge.com/vmware_converter_windows_linux

I tried it and it works. But, in the end I decided to just make my own VMs from scratch using VMware server (available for free).

Any way, just some ideas.

 

[Michelle Knight]

That's cool! I use Linux for most things, but my primary game is Windows only, so my main PC is stuck on Windows, hence I use IDImager ... but Bibble Pro will now be on my shopping list.

Thanks for posting that. I was really begining to think that Linux was badly wanting in RAW processing.

 

[brad_R]

Mac. Used to use Bridge -> ACR -> PSCS2 but am now giving Lightroom 1.0 a try and so far am very impressed.

FYI, recent Macs (Intel) can all run both Mac and Windows OSes, and it's incredibly easy. So if you can't make up your mind you can hang onto both. (Also, the Mac OS is Unix-based, like Linux, so it shares some of the same stability advantages. If you're savvy enough you can pretty much run it from a Unix-based terminal when you want to.)

 

[ScottCC]

Windows XP, CS2, PSP 9

 

[DougSmith]

I quit using Macs 17 years ago; personal preference.
Like cameras... use whatever works and makes you happy and productive.
--

• Doug

 

[dnscott548]

I use MacPro & CS2

I here this all the time that Mac is more expensive than PCs, maybe in the low end, but MacPro is $2,500, the equivilent Dell (Precision 380) is $3,200 and HP is $3,100. Dual intel Xeon duo 2.66G processors, 1g ram, metal case, etc. Mac is much less expensive on the high end.

 

[1ajs]

1337

 

[jabroo]

Currently using Lightroom, but it is to expire within a week... Aperture and Bibble are the two runners up.
--
J-A

• Live today as there was no tomorrow