[Andrew Stephens]

So, I use my trusty 1.33 Ghz Ai book all day to design and illustrate childrens books, so Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.
Now I'm feeling the time to upgrade and maybe to a proper workstation. I'm fine to use the PB at home in the eves when necessary as it's not all the time.

Obvioulsy if PS, ID and Il were UB then the new MacPro jobbies would kick my PB righteously, however they aren't so...
If I get a dual 2 Ghz G5 tower as a run out machine will it be a big go boost over the pb, or will the Mac Pro run my apps under rosetta at a speed boost over the PB, come to that would a dual core iMac do the job too.

any ideas?

[pjosborne]

I have a 1.5 GHz Al-book and a 2x2GHz G5. I also have (for another couple of hours) a MBP 2GHz which arrived a couple of days ago (intended as a replacement for the PB but being returned because of idle processor whine - still!). Assuming that the MBP is similar to the iMac in terms of performance, I would advise against it for PS / Illustrator etc. To me (and this is purely subjective) Rosetta apps were noticeably slower than on my PB. It kind of felt like a backwards step.

I expect the Mac Pro would be a different story. I guess it would be a similar speed to my G5 for PS, DW etc. And the difference between my PB and G5 is like night and day.

Hope this is some help
Peter

[brokenjago]

From what I hear, at the very least, a Mac Pro with sufficient RAM (Rosetta is a huge RAM hog,) Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign will feel at least as fast on a Mac Pro as compared to a 1.5Ghz PB, but most likely much faster.

Note that you'd want at least 4 GB RAM for this, and if you're running all three at the same time, I'd go with 8 GB.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by Andrew Stephens

So, I use my trusty 1.33 Ghz Ai book all day to design and illustrate childrens books, so Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.
Now I'm feeling the time to upgrade and maybe to a proper workstation. I'm fine to use the PB at home in the eves when necessary as it's not all the time.

Obvioulsy if PS, ID and Il were UB then the new MacPro jobbies would kick my PB righteously, however they aren't so...
If I get a dual 2 Ghz G5 tower as a run out machine will it be a big go boost over the pb, or will the Mac Pro run my apps under rosetta at a speed boost over the PB, come to that would a dual core iMac do the job too.

any ideas?

Don't even dream of buying a legacy G5. CS3 runs OK under Rosetta on MPs, and CS3 will be UB in just 7 months while your new box will have a life of 3-5 years.

You may want to wait to see the Merom MBPs just in case something dramatic happens with their likely release in the next month. CS2 is marginal on our PBs and you may decide you want to run the whole show on a Merom MBP if the best Meroms are built to utilize enough RAM. I am hoping for a 17" that goes all out for graphics - the h*ll with battery life or fan usage, it can always be run at reduced output when just running simple apps like browers and office.

-Allen Wicks