[ort888]

The company I work for is dumb. DUMB.

I have been using a 4 year old G4/400 with 256 megs of RAM for 1.5 years now to do heavy Photoshop and design work. Not wanting to switch the department over to OSX they kept waffling and waffling on buying me a new system. No amount of convincing made them want to buy me more RAM either. It was annoying at first, but as the months rolled on it became more like a running joke. I mean, seriously, if they wanted to pay me to spend half my day waiting for a 200 Meg Photoshop file to open, then really that's their problem, not mine. I'm still getting paid.

Anyway, they have finally decided to upgrade our systems. I'm going to be gettting a new duel G5/1.8. I'm thrilled. Problem is, is that this guy seems to think that 256 megs of RAM + the 512 megs of free RAM from MacMall is going to be enough. I know it isn't. I've tried being polite. I've tried to show him a couple of articles. Nothing seems to work., This guy just doesn't want to hear it.

Now he just thinks I'm being ridiculous. He thinks I should just be happy with the G5 and drop it. It's true, the G5 will make me very happy and 100X more productive, but it seems to me that spending $2,000 on a system and then not bothering to spend an extra $150 to raise the RAM to a decent amount is insane.

The problem with this guy, is that while he's very knowledgable, he's been at the same place for 17 years. He's way behind in the times. He's still thinking like it's 1998. He is terrified of spending money.

My opinion is as follows... I think it is sheer lunacy to pay a team of designers over $300,000 a year to work on crappy subpar equipment. We are busy all the time. Completely swamped with work. I think that new computers would easily pay for themselves in a matter of months (or weeks). There are 7 of us, and only 2 of us are even getting these G5s (the rest have Quicksilvers with between 256 and 768 MEGS of RAM). I still think this is idiotic. We routinely work with 300+ MEG photoshop files. We routinely make PDFs out of 3-400 MEG .ps files. If you walk down the row of designers, half of us will be staring at the screen waiting for a bar to creep across the screen.

Ugh. I'm rambling. At any rate, here is what I'm asking. What, in your educated opinion, is an ideal workstation for a designer doing work of this nature? How much RAm would be ideal for heavy photoshop work? Do any of you have any links to third party sites that talk about RAM recommendations and have speed tests?(other then xlr8yourmac, which I already have) Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[Socially Awkward Solo]

700 might be ok but 1.2 is much more better for that type of work.

[Eug Wanker]

Hehe. You just can't figure some people. I've got 768 MB RAM in my laptop from 2002 and while it's fine for my (usually) light usage, I couldn't imagine having to deal with that amount of RAM for pro work.

Anyways, is there anywhere that actually publishes that unwritten rule that a Photoshop box should have at least 5X the RAM as your largest files, JUST FOR PHOTOSHOP? ie. it seems that 1.25 GB RAM seems like the minimum for you, and that 768 breaks that rule badly.

Just how much more is 2x512 gonna cost them 2x512? What, $130? That kind of investment will pay for itself in a couple of days if you're dealing with 300 MB files.

In fact, it seems that right off the bat you should be filling up the 4 slots with 512 MB DIMMS for 2 GB.

On a smaller scale, I had to deal with the same thing at my work place. Our lab had a computer with... 64 MB running NT. It would take literally 5 minutes just to boot the machine, but we had to use that machine on a regular basis to enter data. Finally I just bit the bullet and bought extra RAM myself because they refused to upgrade it.

[cal6n]

Buy your own RAM (or arrange to have some on approval) and when he wants to know why your machine is so much faster than the rest, you can tell him!

[littlegreenspud]

You could use one of the best weapons around - accountants!

I had a problem at work where they would not fix our hot water urn, and insisted we used a kettle. So I worked out how much time was being wasted by people waiting for the kettle to boil (no one would go away and come back latter as someone else would have used the freshly boiled water for them selves!) and the average wage and found that the repair would repay itself in under a day. I published the results for every one to see and Balm! the urn was repaired immediately!

So work out the time spent waiting for jobs to render etc multiply by the average wage of the person waiting and present the business case to upgrade the RAM. You might want to give him a chance to upgrade the RAM before hitting him with the accountants. . .

[spreadlight]

Just post his email address and we'll take care of it!!

[-Q-]

Originally posted by littlegreenspud:
So work out the time spent waiting for jobs to render etc multiply by the average wage of the person waiting and present the business case to upgrade the RAM. You might want to give him a chance to upgrade the RAM before hitting him with the accountants. . .

That is a great idea. There's no better way to get a penny-pincher to loosen his wallet than to show him he's wasting more money by not doing so...

[The Placid Casual]

While I agree about the fact you need more RAM... you ARE getting upgraded from a G4 400 to a Dual 1.8 so that has got to be something.

Could you leave it amonth or two, show how much more productive you are with the G5, and [i]then[/a] ask for the more RAM on the premise that you could be even more productive...

[McFarmer]

ort888, would that article help?

[xdude]

I've had similar problems at most places I work at. My solution: If you can swing it, buy it yourself. If it's worth it to make your working environment that much better, then just take care of the problem yourself.

A friend is killing himself for a kvm switch for his multiple systems. IT won't budge. He won't budge, even though I recently pointed out a $30 switch recently. Move on!

[TheDigitalMan]

I have been known to buy stuff myself from time to time. But I generally prefer to let the company buy it. I guess I'm lucky because now I work for a company where they place a HIGH value on their "Well Paid" personnel and when it comes to spending money they have really spoiled me rotten! If it is going to help me then buy all means buy it is their attitude and generally I don't even have to justify the expenditure with proof. They take me at my word. Which is a refreshing change from some of my previous jobs. I manage the art department and I get to buy whatever I want pretty much. Oh, is that why I'm happy at my job now-a-days? I wondered what it was.

Small company - roughly 50-100 employees. Owned by one person who understands that it takes money to make money. He has done really well for himself. He pays his people well too. I like his philosophy. He was hiring a bindery worker one day and had me sit in on the interview. He showed me what all the other places had been paying this person (Ranged from 5.35 and hour to 6.50 an hour). He liked what he saw experience wise and after chatting with the person a few minutes asked them if they would like to start on Monday. Of course they were thrilled to be offered the job on the spot and he hadn't even told them what he was going to pay them. He explained that they could start on Monday and he would have them work for two weeks on a trial basis. During that time he would pay them 7.00 an hour. At the end of the two week trial period he would give them a raise to 8.00 an hour BUT they had to be worth 8.00 an hour to him or else he would have to let them go. Talk about INCENTIVE! These people go to work for him and REALLY WORK! They work their tails off for him. They are happy to be making 1-2 more an hour than everybody else doing the same thing in town. They make sure that at the end of the trial period he's going to decide to keep them. His entire bindery is filled with top notch hard working people and that is why. He pays out a quarterly bonus to everyone not just management etc. Of course management gets bigger bonuses than the hourly people but than they have bigger problems to deal with. He's just very fair. My Christmas bonus last year was 5 times larger than any bonus I had ever earned before in my life. You think I was excited! You bet I was! And I had only been with him a year. It hurts me to think what his other managers that have been with him the last 10 years are getting. Hurts in a good way not bad. I'm not envious. They have been with him through thick and thin they certainly deserve whatever they get.

O.K. I've rambled off the subject I think. Time to quit babbling.

But for the money we're talking I would just tell them that if they aren't going to buy the RAM than you would like to. And they can pay you back for it after they see what a difference it makes. I don't know. People like that are hard to understand. But I've worked for those types before. It can be very frustrating.