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Questions from a noob.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Nov 2005
Status:
Offline
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A couple questions for Mac people.
I am currently a PC user and just ordered my first Powerbook. My question is how good is the built in sound card for these Powerbooks. I have a Dell Inspiron laptop now that I had to buy a Audigy 2 PMCIA card for due to the awful distortion when listening to movies with headphones. I thought the problem was crappy headphones so I bought a nice set of Sennheiser HIFI headphones but it didn't fix it. Only buying the new sound card did.
Will i need to buy a sound card for this since I Sound Blaster isn't supported by Mac? Is the sound card that is built in a pretty good card?
What is the best software for image/graphics, office suite (mainly concerned with a good spreadsheet program that runs well on mac), CAD software and Web publishing.
I am looking at the following for each:
- Adobe Photoshop CS2 for graphics
- Dreamweaver 8 for Web Publishing
- MacDraft Pro 5.5 for CAD
- iWork for a word processor/Mariner Calc for a spreadsheet. I heard they work together well.
Thanks everyone.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jun 2005
Status:
Offline
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Kidn of a newbie myself but I'll chip in my £0.02. Photoshop runs wondefully on a Mac. Any Mac. You would be wise to have at least 512 of RAM or, if you can afford it, 1Gb, especially if you're doing really advanced imagework. On that note, are you ordering by mail or buying in shop? I'd advise the later as some people have reported problems with "lines" on the screen, although I don't recall seeing anything obvious when I saw one at the Apple Store in London.
Either way, it's not going to stop me from getting one at some point this week and I believe a guy called pete has aleady got one on order and is expecting it within the next few days. Personally, I'm waiting to see what he finds.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Nov 2005
Status:
Offline
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I will have mine in the morning before I leave for south Florida. I have an extra gig of ram coming with it and I have some trials of CS2 and Dreamweaver downloaded for testing while ou of town.
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
Status:
Online
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The PowerBook's audio is OK. M-audio has some nice addon soundcards if it doesn't suit your needs.
Image/graphics - obviously Photoshop. Consider Aperature if you work with RAW images a lot.
Office suite - MS Office, or iWork + Gnumeric (in X11)
Web publishing - Dreamweaver
CAD - Not sure... none of the popular and/or high-end programs are available. I think VectorWords, ArchiCAD and Power CADD are the most used options.
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: great northwest
Status:
Offline
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For the office suite, before shelling out $ for MS Office or iWork, try the free open source NeoOffice/j. It plays well with MS Office users on Mac or Windows.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: London, UK
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Offline
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Nov 2005
Status:
Offline
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Thank you all. this is pretty much info I needed about the software.
I am currently looking at ArchiCAD and MacDraft Pro for the CAD software.
I downloaded NeoOffice this morning to give it a try this week. If NeoOffice doesn't pan out I will probably go with Office 04.
Now I am just sitting around waiting for FedEx to bring me the laptop so i can head out of town.
Thanks for the help all.
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