Your thoughts on the new iMac 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 - PrePress Work?

[Zander]

The glossy monitors in many new iMacs and Macbooks are receiving many negative reviews with regards to reflection, eye strain and other useability issues - not sure about ICC profiling.

There is one U.S. based company that will change out the glass for matt glass and put in a new bezel and make the whole hack look like a factory job...pretty much what Apple should have done in the first place.

EDIT: Just search around the common Mac related forums for glossy display issues...


Stephen Marsh

Hey, thanks for posting replies! Do you happen to know the name of that company that will switch them out?

Now that I have read these replies and looked at some issues with the glossy monitors, I think I will tell them to hold off or get the MacPros..

[Stephen Marsh]

I can't find the link for the company (I am sure that I bookmarked it), however here is the do it yourself hack -

http://www.fireandknowledge.org/arch...en-glare-free/

Reduce the high gloss on an iMac screen | PRODIG photography news

Anti-glare film over a glossy screen does not seem to be the way to go.


Stephen Marsh

[kaiserwilhelm]

We do a lot back and forth in parallels. I would give XP a gig of ram and the mac 2 gig. Beyond slowness, it was a craziness of crashes, strange font issues, etc.
I know my way around fonts in my sleep so it was not something we were doing - proved by the fact that the instant we went to the towers it all went away.
I think that some of it might have been in my head to a degree. I KNEW that this was it. Not one more ounce of oomph if I needed. The tower I can throw another 8 gig of ram into it if I want.
Price difference is just not that much. Get a refurbished tower from Mac. I have bought nothing but refurbished for the last decade and have not had one issue with Apple. They have the same warranty. Also, you can still buy the apple support package within the first 364 days for the same price.
Why wouldn't you save 15 percent?

[prepressguru]

For all the reasons posted here, is why Apple needs a Mid tower Mac. The Mac pros are great but way more pricey and to much expansion then needed. But as usual Apple knows best.....

[Stephen Marsh]

For all the reasons posted here, is why Apple needs a Mid tower Mac. The Mac pros are great but way more pricey and to much expansion then needed. But as usual Apple knows best.....

Apple do know best for their bottom line...they know that for many, the iMac would compete with the more expensive tower - which is probably another reason why there is no matt screen on the new iMacs, in order to force more tower sales.

Stephen Marsh

[rich apollo]

What kind of work are you doing that was bogging down the iMacs?

Doing PDF editing. Type edits, adjusting images, versioning, cropping, extracting pages, placing elements, replacing elements. A lot depends on how complex the PDFs are. I've seen speed improvements since upgrading to Leopard. Haven't played with Snow Leopard, yet.

[Zander]

Thanks, I think we will go with the MacPro Towers (I hope)!

[geozinger]

Hi Rich,

Thanks for your response. So this was taking place on OS 10.4.x? I know on my own machine at home (G5 iMac with Leopard) that moving to Leopard was an improvement, but of course, I'm not doing work-level editing there. It seems that many people have gone down this path, but kaiserwilhem brings up a good point about refurb Mac towers. We're not quite ready to pull the trigger on this expenditure, so I have plenty of time to research the pros and cons.

TIA
George

[rich apollo]

No, I've got my station running 10.5.8, now. I was doing some text edits on some PDFs yesterday and the machine was chugging. Acrobat is just calculation intensive. I can't say, with any certainty, that a tower would help. But given the opportunity, I'd stuff that thing with RAM and give it a try. The new iMacs, can hold 8GB of RAM. They should be sufficient. The towers will always be more expandable, though.

[gumbylives]

We have recently got a 2.93 Intel Core 2 Duo 4 gig of ram IMac. It has been great with all CS4, Dynastrip apps. The only thing I should tell you is you have to calibrate your monitor with something like an EyeOne as you cannot adjust the brightness to a workable level without special software (I have tried).
The new slender keyboard is a plus as well. I love it.
Good luck
Gumby