Computer System for Digital Photography: MS-Windows, Apple, or Linux

I need a new computer. The major jobs are internet serfing and digital
photography. What're the pros and cons between these three systems:
MS-Windows, Apple (iMac G4 or G5), or Linux-PC? I'm focusing on the
digital photography.

I've only used Wintel so far. My concerns on MS-Windows system is its
rapid speed degradation due to MS's endless patches and the occasional
Trojan/spywares. I don't know how to prevent it, as my whole family are
on every newly purchased PCs. All my computer got z-times performance
loss a month after the purchasing. A friend told me he no longer had
the problem since he switched to iMac. But he is not sure it's because
he has different habit, or because the IMac is less targeted by these
malicious software.

My concern on the iMac is, is it equally supported by all the major
digital photography softwares. Photoshop-CS is not a problem, but what
about, say, Neat-Image or whatever that is useful and important?

Linux PC seems the best buy in terms of hardware price. Linux has play
an important roles in my work place, where all the high performance
servers are Linux systems. It usually either works far better than or
far worse than, say, Solaris systems. Overall, it's better. But I've
never had a HOME PC with Linux. Is it well supported, particularly for
digital photography.

For home use, I definitely recommend a PC running Windows XP.
The speed degradation you get on your new PCs must be due to some
problem - are you a lot of downloaded software or something?
Regards
Gary Hendricks
www.basic-digital-photography.com

In article .com,
wrote:

I need a new computer. The major jobs are internet serfing and digital
photography. What're the pros and cons between these three systems:
MS-Windows, Apple (iMac G4 or G5), or Linux-PC? I'm focusing on the
digital photography.

Since I have lived and worked in the ahem REAL world, I have become
increasingly familiar with Windoze, most recently after my company provided me
with a brand new IBM ThinkPad running XPpro.

I am now an even more devoted user of Macintosh.

I have a friend that has been a long time user of Linux. Familiar with his
exploits, I would choose Linux over Windoze. However, I would STILL choose
the Mac OS.

The artsy-fartsy community has used Mac OS for years and I suspect it is
gradually (VERY gradually) increasing its market share, at least in some areas.

Years ago, Microsoft may well have SAVED Apple Computer when it bought 100,000
shares of Apple's common stock. To this day, Microsoft has an autonomous
division for development of Mac OS applications.

I use Microsoft Office for Mac and have for years. It is NO kludge or shoddy
port. It's good stuff - from the ground up.

iPhoto (Mac only) is awesome. I have been using it for a long time now,
despite only having switched to digital a couple weeks ago.

Surfing the net is FAST, reliable and intuitive with Safari.

Mac OSX is based on Unix. Compared to the Windoze world, we have virtually NO
viruses (of course, there are a FEW) or the myriad malady that beset the MS
world.

Get a Mac. You will NOT regret it.

http://www.apple.com/switch/


JR

wrote in message
oups.com...
I need a new computer. The major jobs are internet serfing and digital
photography. What're the pros and cons between these three systems:
MS-Windows, Apple (iMac G4 or G5), or Linux-PC? I'm focusing on the
digital photography.

I've only used Wintel so far. My concerns on MS-Windows system is its
rapid speed degradation due to MS's endless patches and the occasional
Trojan/spywares. I don't know how to prevent it, as my whole family are
on every newly purchased PCs. All my computer got z-times performance
loss a month after the purchasing. A friend told me he no longer had
the problem since he switched to iMac. But he is not sure it's because
he has different habit, or because the IMac is less targeted by these
malicious software.

My concern on the iMac is, is it equally supported by all the major
digital photography softwares. Photoshop-CS is not a problem, but what
about, say, Neat-Image or whatever that is useful and important?

Linux PC seems the best buy in terms of hardware price. Linux has play
an important roles in my work place, where all the high performance
servers are Linux systems. It usually either works far better than or
far worse than, say, Solaris systems. Overall, it's better. But I've
never had a HOME PC with Linux. Is it well supported, particularly for
digital photography.

Like an awful lot of people who will respond after my post, I've had my
complaints and gripes with the various versions of windows. However, I've
concluded you just have to join them. There is a lot of shareware in
addition to regular retailers for software, Hardware for the pc is cheaper
and more plentiful than for the mac. As for Linux, I tried it once, could
never find the drivers for the hardware I had at the time. Great for servers
and industry, good for techies at home, for the family forget it.

Now for spam and virus. Use something like mailwasher. If you have more than
one account, get the pro version which will cost, but not much. You won't
stop all spam, but it will never make it to your machine. Get bootitng from
terabyteunlimited.com. This will let you make partitions and save as image
files, a great utility and doesn't cost much. If you have kids that play
games, you might want to set them up in their own partition. Use virus
protection software, avast is free and works well. I've never had a virus,
but at one time literally thousands of attacks from sven.
Finally, I have three mail accounts one of which is hotmail. I do not
receive spam from hotmail or one of the accounts. I get lot's from the third
and I am going to drop that isp. I can only conclude that the spam free ones
are doing some sort of filtering.

By the way, with today's huge hd's, if you use bootitng as I suggested, you
can quite happily set up a parallel windows and linux partition. That's what
I did, fairly painlessly (there is good support for doing this). Just be
sure the machine you buy has the linux support. Visit the
www.terabyteunlimited.com website, get on their forum and post there, you'll
find lots of users running both.
Good luck, and don't be so pessimistic about windows, it's not all that bad
and xp home works very well with good multimedia support. Use the
partitioning software to separate the os from data, do this early, make
image files of the os so you can always return to a known good point without
starting from scratch. Make sure you get a good dvd burner.
Dave Cohen

wrote in message oups.com...
I need a new computer. The major jobs are internet serfing and digital
photography. What're the pros and cons between these three systems:
MS-Windows, Apple (iMac G4 or G5), or Linux-PC? I'm focusing on the
digital photography.

Stick with Wintel. Unless you've already used unix or a
unix variant, the learning curve for Linux will be ridiculous.

As for Apple, they're dying a slow painful death, in spite
of their marketing claims. The only reason they're still in
business at all is because of investments by MS.

wrote:
I need a new computer. The major jobs are internet serfing and digital
photography. What're the pros and cons between these three systems:
MS-Windows, Apple (iMac G4 or G5), or Linux-PC? I'm focusing on the
digital photography.

I've only used Wintel so far. My concerns on MS-Windows system is its
rapid speed degradation due to MS's endless patches and the occasional
Trojan/spywares. I don't know how to prevent it, as my whole family are
on every newly purchased PCs. All my computer got z-times performance
loss a month after the purchasing. A friend told me he no longer had
the problem since he switched to iMac. But he is not sure it's because
he has different habit, or because the IMac is less targeted by these
malicious software.

My concern on the iMac is, is it equally supported by all the major
digital photography softwares. Photoshop-CS is not a problem, but what
about, say, Neat-Image or whatever that is useful and important?

Linux PC seems the best buy in terms of hardware price. Linux has play
an important roles in my work place, where all the high performance
servers are Linux systems. It usually either works far better than or
far worse than, say, Solaris systems. Overall, it's better. But I've
never had a HOME PC with Linux. Is it well supported, particularly for
digital photography.


I run winow$ and linux PCs/servers in my home. Every old
PC gets converted into a linux server and disk farm for
backup and general use. I would switch over
to linux completely if photoshop CS
and later versions were on it, as well as a few other
programs. As a very technical person, unix system administrator
for 20 years, I feel unix and linux are far more secure
than windows probably can ever hope to be. I have linux
systems that have been up and cranking for 524 days straight
without a hitch, processing far more data than my XP machines,
which I must boot daily.

An example of this week's XP problem: I bought my wife a new XP
machine because spyware took over her old one and made it totally
unusable (I get it for a new 1.8 GHz linux box). On the new machine,
some software was installed that took over the net, bypassed
the operating system and was transferring data out the interface
but fooled the operating system to say that the network traffic
was only a few bytes per second. My router proved otherwise.
My wife uninstalled the program. It did not show in
programs from the start menu, but still automatically ran
after reboot. I fixed it and completely deleted it.
How can a rogue program completely circumvent the operating system
so easily on XP? Unbelievable how anyone could depend on windows
with crap like this happening so easily.

However, I still use a windows XP machine for digital
photography. Why? There is no choice for the work I do.
If I only used photoshop, I would get a mac. If all the
programs I need were on a mac, I would switch.
If they were all on linux, I would switch.
Microsoft has the stranglehold. So, I'll use xp when I have to,
and linux when I can. I try to minimize what the XP machine
can do. At work I use unix machines, even for email.
But the threats to windows is becoming so severe, even with
the new "secure" XP service pack 2, that I may not buy another
windows machine again, and just stop using
those programs that are only on xp. (Note to software companies:
linux is growing: if you want customers, include linux ports.)

My son's computer (XP) was taken over by spyware this summer.
Spyware software removed it, but it was back in a couple of
days (1800 spyware programs)!!! Another attempt at deleting
the spyware resulted in the computer being disabled at would no
longer boot. He switched to linux, and ran with linux for
6 months and had not spyware/virus etc problems.
But he was frustrated by loss of some features,
including his digital camera software. He had to use my
xp machine to download pictures from his camera, then transfer
them to the xp box. He now has a new xp box with the latest
spyware/antivirus/firewall software (the same software that
let the problem happen on my wife's identical new machine).
Linux simply is not easy enough for the masses: it still needs
user and system administrator GUI development (it's getting much
better but still has a little more to go).

If you run XP it is not safe to attach it to the internet.

Macs are unix. Unix/linux is much safer not only because
most spyware/virus/ etc do not target unix/linux. They are
safer because if spyware/virus software did attack, the
systems are so robust, they would do little, if any,
damage if the computer is set up properly and the user does
not run as root. (No user should operate with system admin
privileges, on any operating system, unless doing
system admin.) I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

Roger

Jim Redelfs wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:


I need a new computer. The major jobs are internet serfing and digital
photography. What're the pros and cons between these three systems:
MS-Windows, Apple (iMac G4 or G5), or Linux-PC? I'm focusing on the
digital photography.


Since I have lived and worked in the ahem REAL world, I have become
increasingly familiar with Windoze, most recently after my company provided me
with a brand new IBM ThinkPad running XPpro.

I am now an even more devoted user of Macintosh.

I have a friend that has been a long time user of Linux. Familiar with his
exploits, I would choose Linux over Windoze. However, I would STILL choose
the Mac OS.

The artsy-fartsy community has used Mac OS for years and I suspect it is
gradually (VERY gradually) increasing its market share, at least in some areas.

Years ago, Microsoft may well have SAVED Apple Computer when it bought 100,000
shares of Apple's common stock. To this day, Microsoft has an autonomous
division for development of Mac OS applications.

I use Microsoft Office for Mac and have for years. It is NO kludge or shoddy
port. It's good stuff - from the ground up.

iPhoto (Mac only) is awesome. I have been using it for a long time now,
despite only having switched to digital a couple weeks ago.

Surfing the net is FAST, reliable and intuitive with Safari.

Mac OSX is based on Unix. Compared to the Windoze world, we have virtually NO
viruses (of course, there are a FEW) or the myriad malady that beset the MS
world.

Get a Mac. You will NOT regret it.

http://www.apple.com/switch/


JR


You need to enlighten me about the vital of iPhoto. It can't handle RAW.
It doesn't store photos offline and keep a catalog. And even worse, it
doesn't show brightness correctly. I have to use Photoshop to check if
the pictures are underexposed. iLife is merely a toy for novices.

Apparently, _Dave Cohen_, on 25/12/04 21:46,typed:
wrote in message
oups.com...

I need a new computer. The major jobs are internet serfing and digital
photography. What're the pros and cons between these three systems:
MS-Windows, Apple (iMac G4 or G5), or Linux-PC? I'm focusing on the
digital photography.

I've only used Wintel so far. My concerns on MS-Windows system is its
rapid speed degradation due to MS's endless patches and the occasional
Trojan/spywares. I don't know how to prevent it, as my whole family are
on every newly purchased PCs. All my computer got z-times performance
loss a month after the purchasing. A friend told me he no longer had
the problem since he switched to iMac. But he is not sure it's because
he has different habit, or because the IMac is less targeted by these
malicious software.

My concern on the iMac is, is it equally supported by all the major
digital photography softwares. Photoshop-CS is not a problem, but what
about, say, Neat-Image or whatever that is useful and important?

Linux PC seems the best buy in terms of hardware price. Linux has play
an important roles in my work place, where all the high performance
servers are Linux systems. It usually either works far better than or
far worse than, say, Solaris systems. Overall, it's better. But I've
never had a HOME PC with Linux. Is it well supported, particularly for
digital photography.


Like an awful lot of people who will respond after my post, I've had my
complaints and gripes with the various versions of windows. However, I've
concluded you just have to join them. There is a lot of shareware in
addition to regular retailers for software, Hardware for the pc is cheaper
and more plentiful than for the mac. As for Linux, I tried it once, could
never find the drivers for the hardware I had at the time. Great for servers
and industry, good for techies at home, for the family forget it.


Suse, Mandrake and Fedora Linuxes make everything a breeze. The
difficulties you are talking about are long gone (Linux and related
software is at an extremely fast development path). e.g. to download my
pics from my G5, I don't need to install any additional software, it
just works.


Now for spam and virus. Use something like mailwasher. If you have more than
one account, get the pro version which will cost, but not much. You won't
stop all spam, but it will never make it to your machine. Get bootitng from
terabyteunlimited.com. This will let you make partitions and save as image
files, a great utility and doesn't cost much. If you have kids that play
games, you might want to set them up in their own partition. Use virus
protection software, avast is free and works well. I've never had a virus,
but at one time literally thousands of attacks from sven.
Finally, I have three mail accounts one of which is hotmail. I do not
receive spam from hotmail or one of the accounts. I get lot's from the third
and I am going to drop that isp. I can only conclude that the spam free ones
are doing some sort of filtering.

Windows can be used more safely, but the downside is you need to gain at
least some knowledge about your OS and become Internet literate (first
step: IE is NOT "the internet").
- Install a firewall (zonealarm is free) and/or get a router (a hardware
router is pretty cheap nowadays, $5~$40).
- Have a good anti virus (AVG is free, as are some others).
- Have an anti spyware program (spybot, ad aware are free).
- Never use good email address in newsgroups, make a dispensable one in
yahoo or hotmail etc.
- Do NOT use IE. Using it is an invitation to spyware and other bad
stuff. Install Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) or
some other similar browser. Firefox is free, has tabbed browsing and is
much much more secure than IE.
- Do NOT use outlook, it just lets itself get high jacked by spyware
related stuff. One choice: Thunderbird (www.mozilla.org) due to same
reasons as Firefox above.
- Keep your Windows installation fully updated.


By the way, with today's huge hd's, if you use bootitng as I suggested, you
can quite happily set up a parallel windows and linux partition. That's what

Yup, that is going to be a reasonable installation while getting
introduced to Linux.


I did, fairly painlessly (there is good support for doing this). Just be
sure the machine you buy has the linux support. Visit the

Most of the desktop are supported. The problems could be the ones which
have brand new hardware whose drivers are not written in Linux yet.


www.terabyteunlimited.com website, get on their forum and post there, you'll
find lots of users running both.
Good luck, and don't be so pessimistic about windows, it's not all that bad
and xp home works very well with good multimedia support. Use the
partitioning software to separate the os from data, do this early, make
image files of the os so you can always return to a known good point without
starting from scratch. Make sure you get a good dvd burner.
Dave Cohen




GL,
-HS

Apparently, _Dave Cohen_, on 25/12/04 21:46,typed:
wrote in message
oups.com...

I need a new computer. The major jobs are internet serfing and digital
photography. What're the pros and cons between these three systems:
MS-Windows, Apple (iMac G4 or G5), or Linux-PC? I'm focusing on the
digital photography.

I've only used Wintel so far. My concerns on MS-Windows system is its
rapid speed degradation due to MS's endless patches and the occasional
Trojan/spywares. I don't know how to prevent it, as my whole family are
on every newly purchased PCs. All my computer got z-times performance
loss a month after the purchasing. A friend told me he no longer had
the problem since he switched to iMac. But he is not sure it's because
he has different habit, or because the IMac is less targeted by these
malicious software.

My concern on the iMac is, is it equally supported by all the major
digital photography softwares. Photoshop-CS is not a problem, but what
about, say, Neat-Image or whatever that is useful and important?

Linux PC seems the best buy in terms of hardware price. Linux has play
an important roles in my work place, where all the high performance
servers are Linux systems. It usually either works far better than or
far worse than, say, Solaris systems. Overall, it's better. But I've
never had a HOME PC with Linux. Is it well supported, particularly for
digital photography.


Like an awful lot of people who will respond after my post, I've had my
complaints and gripes with the various versions of windows. However, I've
concluded you just have to join them. There is a lot of shareware in
addition to regular retailers for software, Hardware for the pc is cheaper
and more plentiful than for the mac. As for Linux, I tried it once, could
never find the drivers for the hardware I had at the time. Great for servers
and industry, good for techies at home, for the family forget it.


Suse, Mandrake and Fedora Linuxes make everything a breeze. The
difficulties you are talking about are long gone (Linux and related
software is at an extremely fast development path). e.g. to download my
pics from my G5, I don't need to install any additional software, it
just works.


Now for spam and virus. Use something like mailwasher. If you have more than
one account, get the pro version which will cost, but not much. You won't
stop all spam, but it will never make it to your machine. Get bootitng from
terabyteunlimited.com. This will let you make partitions and save as image
files, a great utility and doesn't cost much. If you have kids that play
games, you might want to set them up in their own partition. Use virus
protection software, avast is free and works well. I've never had a virus,
but at one time literally thousands of attacks from sven.
Finally, I have three mail accounts one of which is hotmail. I do not
receive spam from hotmail or one of the accounts. I get lot's from the third
and I am going to drop that isp. I can only conclude that the spam free ones
are doing some sort of filtering.

Windows can be used more safely, but the downside is you need to gain at
least some knowledge about your OS and become Internet literate (first
step: IE is NOT "the internet").
- Install a firewall (zonealarm is free) and/or get a router (a hardware
router is pretty cheap nowadays, $5~$40).
- Have a good anti virus (AVG is free, as are some others).
- Have an anti spyware program (spybot, ad aware are free).
- Never use good email address in newsgroups, make a dispensable one in
yahoo or hotmail etc.
- Do NOT use IE. Using it is an invitation to spyware and other bad
stuff. Install Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) or
some other similar browser. Firefox is free, has tabbed browsing and is
much much more secure than IE.
- Do NOT use outlook, it just lets itself get high jacked by spyware
related stuff. One choice: Thunderbird (www.mozilla.org) due to same
reasons as Firefox above.
- Keep your Windows installation fully updated.


By the way, with today's huge hd's, if you use bootitng as I suggested, you
can quite happily set up a parallel windows and linux partition. That's what

Yup, that is going to be a reasonable installation while getting
introduced to Linux.


I did, fairly painlessly (there is good support for doing this). Just be
sure the machine you buy has the linux support. Visit the

Most of the desktop are supported. The problems could be the ones which
have brand new hardware whose drivers are not written in Linux yet.


www.terabyteunlimited.com website, get on their forum and post there, you'll
find lots of users running both.
Good luck, and don't be so pessimistic about windows, it's not all that bad
and xp home works very well with good multimedia support. Use the
partitioning software to separate the os from data, do this early, make
image files of the os so you can always return to a known good point without
starting from scratch. Make sure you get a good dvd burner.
Dave Cohen




GL,
-HS

"Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark)" writes:
I would switch over to linux completely if photoshop CS and later
versions were on it, as well as a few other programs. ... However,
I still use a windows XP machine for digital photography. Why?
There is no choice for the work I do. If I only used photoshop, I
would get a mac. If all the programs I need were on a mac, I would
switch. If they were all on linux, I would switch.

What programs? All you mentioned was Photoshop. Maybe you don't
need those other programs. I get by ok with Gimp instead of Photoshop,
but a more serious photog might have problems with that.