[daves666]

Hi everybody:

I'm an instructor at a big community college in San Francisco and we have the opportunity to upgrade one of our computer labs with new Macs. We're having trouble deciding clearly between 20" iMacs and comparable MacPro machines.

The argument for the iMac is essentially that we'd get a lot more computer for our money. If we go this route we could get extra ram, faster video card, beautiful big monitor.

The argument for the MacPro is that it is easier to maintain, and marginally faster. If we went this route we could only get 1gb of ram for each station.

We have about $2300 to spend per station. The computers would be used primarily for graphics work [Quark + Creative Suite].

So wondering:

• Any general thoughts/advice on this decision?

• How important is the difference between 1gb and 2gb of ram?

• Any Mac academic lab managers out there working in iMac labs? What has your experience with these machines in this setting been like?

Thanks so much for any input!

[TimmyDee51]

My advice is to go with the iMac. As a former Mac guy at a small college, I know the money issue is big. Go with the iMac and upgrade the RAM, graphics card, and display. You'll get a very capable iMac for $2300 as opposed to a rather hamstrung Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is great, but you really need a ton of RAM to get them to perform as you would expect them to. Plus, if you're running any apps via Rosetta, RAM will be pretty important. Plus, you can't overlook the advantage of the iMac in cutting down cable clutter.

[mduell]

2GB iMacs all the way. Doubling the RAM is going to be a lot more important than doubling the CPU for most users.

For a "media lab" where you already own nice displays and can blow $4k per workstation, the Mac Pro makes more sense.