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design219 · Nov 23, 2006, 06:47 PM

I'm getting ready to get a new mac and considering a 24 imac", or for just a couple hundred more, a 20 imac" with a 20" second monitor. Any opinions? Assuming maxed out video ram, will the two 20" monitors work well at full color and full pixel resolution?

I work with Final Cut, Motion, Photoshop and Flash, and currently use a dual G5 with a 19" main monitor and a second 15" monitor for palettes. I'm assuming either of the above solutions will be better than this set up.

I'm hoping the two monitor set up will work, that way as the machine becomes outdated, I'll still have a second monitor to use with whatever is the going thing 4 years from now.

slpdLoad · Nov 23, 2006, 07:36 PM

Originally Posted by design219

will the two 20" monitors work well at full color and full pixel resolution?

Yes.

I'd recommend the dual-monitor setup, I think you'll get a lot more productivity out of two monitors. Those apps will take advantage of them, too.

Sbtrfuge · Nov 24, 2006, 01:10 PM

I'd get the 24" imac over the 20+20. Why? 4 years from now, a 20" lcd will probably be pretty small. Also, who knows what connection will be standard then.

The big plus about the 24 is that not only is the screen HUGE and really high res, it's also a lot brighter, with the MXM graphics. The 7300 is decent, but if you do ANYTHING in 3d, or even have the remote chance of doing it in the future, the 7600GT available in the 24" is worth it for that alone.

tooki · Nov 24, 2006, 02:58 PM

Originally Posted by design219

I'm getting ready to get a new mac and considering a 24 imac", or for just a couple hundred more, a 20 imac" with a 20" second monitor. Any opinions? Assuming maxed out video ram, will the two 20" monitors work well at full color and full pixel resolution?

I work with Final Cut, Motion, Photoshop and Flash, and currently use a dual G5 with a 19" main monitor and a second 15" monitor for palettes. I'm assuming either of the above solutions will be better than this set up.

Wait -- you wanna replace a dual G5 with an iMac? Half of the apps you mentioned are not yet available in Universal Binary form, so on an iMac they'll run in Rosetta at a small fraction of the speed of the G5. The other two apps will run great on the iMac, but probably not so much faster as to warrant a new machine.

tooki

design219 · Nov 24, 2006, 03:25 PM

It's kinda of an office switch around of machines at the office. The G5 was one of the first, not sure the speed (I'm on holiday and the machine is at the office). I'm sure that adobe will be putting out universal apps soon. Right? Please say it's so.

Anyway, even with rosetta, I've been told (maybe by less informed authority) that the new machines should be on par for now. Thanks for that heads up, I'll do more research before we proceed with this switch.

PB2K · Nov 30, 2006, 08:23 AM

the screen of my imac g5 20" was cut up by an angry child, i bought it together with an external 20" screen. yesterday i hacked osx with this patch : http://macparts.de/ibook so it can have a dual display setup (instead of mirroring only)

it works great, the ibook g4 displays up to 1600x1200 on a 19" CRT screen, i will hack the imac too.

design219 · Dec 1, 2006, 01:30 PM

Originally Posted by PB2K

the screen of my imac g5 20" was cut up by an angry child, i bought it together with an external 20" screen. yesterday i hacked osx with this patch : http://macparts.de/ibook so it can have a dual display setup (instead of mirroring only)

it works great, the ibook g4 displays up to 1600x1200 on a 19" CRT screen, i will hack the imac too.

I thought that OSX supported dual monitors from within the OS. I have a 20" intel imac at home with a $20 vga adapter I bought last week at the mac store and attached a 19" monitor. Works great as an expanded desktop.

Since I started this thread, my boss surprized me with the 24" imac Monday morning. I've ordered the vga adapter so I can hook one of the old monitors in the office to it as well. I have to say the 24" monitor is reallllllllllllllllllly nice!

PB2K · Dec 1, 2006, 02:05 PM

the 24" has a mini-DVI and supports dual screens.

my 20" imac G5 does not support dualling, and has an inferior mini-VGA port. Apple locked features so they gain a few extra features to sell with a more premium model * ..so I had to use this "hack" to unlock dualscreening on an ibook/imac.

* I had to hack the superdrive of my powerbook 17" 1 Ghz as well, Apple limited the superdrive to 1x buring of DVD-R. After unlocking I had a 2x DVD-R AND DVD-RW capability

a few months later Apple released the 1.33Ghz 17" with 2xDVD-R and DVD-RW burning.

bobolicious · Dec 2, 2006, 08:57 AM

The only advantage I've found with discrete displays is a 23" on a rotating ergotron arm allowing 1920 vertical res for long pages... Otherwize I would think an iMac would be my choice - I use rotation a lot less than I thought I would - a 30" with dual page @ 1600 vertical would be almost as good for that specific use & obviously better for everything else...