[Coffee1970]

Hello, and thanks for reading.

Enrolled in college (I'm 37) for e-Business and major in website design.

I have a Windows PC that works fine. I know that Macs used to be all the rage in graphics and such, but now Windows PC's have really come into the picture.

I will be buying a second computer for me to use....so....

Do I need to learn how to use a MAC in todays website design job market? I know that a lot of programs like Adobe's are available on both systems, but if I get a job somewhere that use Macs still? Are Macs still being used as much these days for website design?

Here's the lowdown.........
I have approx $500 to spend on another computer.
I will either get a Dual 1.25/1.42 G4 Powermac off eBay (1-2gb ram, ati pro, etc)...or go buy a new windows laptop that has the usual Athlon X2 or Intel Duo.

I know that the G4 is older technology, but that's ok....with a good video card, max memory, maybe even Firewire 800, it should still rock, yes?

Any help would be greatly appreciated by those in the field.

Thanks again,
Brian.

[Macola]

Well, you can do website design on any computer, including a Linux box. That said, it wouldn't hurt to learn how to use a Mac if you want to get into a creative field (beyond just writing code). I wouldn't spend $500 on a G4 Mac, though

[bluedog]

Spend the $ on a Mac mini. Sure its not overpowered, and a little light in drive space. Performance should be fine for your needs though. If you wish to run OSX you've got it, for WinXP you run that dual-boot.

Web design may not require or need Macs and some custom software for prototyping is PC-only when dealing with corporate sites, but hand-coding doesn't require anything more than your brain and a text editor.

Both have free options for loading a LAMP stack for testing your sites locally. OSX handles the posix, perl, php, apache stuff a little better IMHO. Its BSD underpinnings really help in that regard.

But it sounds like you really don't want to deal with learning a Mac. For web design on its own, you won't need to know it and can get by with a lowend laptop. G4s are still performing fairly well with Tiger, but I expect with the upcoming new OSX release named Leopard your performance won't be that great. The bus-speed on the G4s were pretty slow (although its not as big an issue for web development). It just doesn't seem like a great investment in the older tech when Intel processors and performance will outperform the G4s and provide ability to run virtualized or dual-boot environments for Windows. If you find you really prefer that option and simply want OSX for added learning experience.

A 512MB RAM, Intel-based Macmini should outperform and dual G4s and even with the anemic video should do better for you in the future. That's the way I'd go with a Mac, or get yourself the Win/Laptop if you really want the portability and can stomach Windows enough. Also, I really recommend finding a PC with WinXP rather than Vista at this time.

Make the most out of your upcoming classes. Did they give you a recommendation of what to use in the classes?

[NobleMatt]

even if u were doing graphics Windows Machines are just as good these days, i mean i got into uni do my graphics on a Windows box but admitedly as i do only graphics i thought i had better learn OS X anyway as most studios run it so bought into it and bought a mac. Coding wise i have 2 mates who do it, one on a MBP and one on a PC so if i was u, 500 on some new chips for your windows machine

[Coffee1970]

First off, thanks for the responses.
Yes, I do want a Mac, used to have an eMac G4 1.25 with Panther.
I will be taking a Mac class for my degree, but it's only one or two at most. I just like Macs though.
I know all about the Vista and its wonderful bugs...have XP Pro at home, and works fine. I will not be getting Vista unless I have to.

I have seen many benchmarks on the various macs. The mini does well in everything but games and some graphics.....but usually better than even a dual 1.42 G4, unless its a photoshop filter or drawing utilizing the dual processors. A new mini will still cost hundreds over 500 though.
I thought I could get a dual g4 mirror door model with a great graphics card and 1.5 to 2gb ram...something a designer used but chose to upgrade...see this all the time.

Thanks again,
Brian

[moonmonkey]

Originally Posted by Coffee1970 

First off, thanks for the responses.
Yes, I do want a Mac, used to have an eMac G4 1.25 with Panther.
I will be taking a Mac class for my degree, but it's only one or two at most. I just like Macs though.
I know all about the Vista and its wonderful bugs...have XP Pro at home, and works fine. I will not be getting Vista unless I have to.

I have seen many benchmarks on the various macs. The mini does well in everything but games and some graphics.....but usually better than even a dual 1.42 G4, unless its a photoshop filter or drawing utilizing the dual processors. A new mini will still cost hundreds over 500 though.
I thought I could get a dual g4 mirror door model with a great graphics card and 1.5 to 2gb ram...something a designer used but chose to upgrade...see this all the time.

Thanks again,
Brian

The mini has a Core Duo so it will out perform a G4 in any Photoshop task easily.

Get a refurb one from Apple (some were going for 380 bucks), plug it into your old screen and keyboard and you are sorted for no more than 500 Bucks and you can run windows and Mac OS.


Don't but a G4 or a PC!

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by moonmonkey 

The mini has a Core Duo so it will out perform a G4 in any Photoshop task easily.

Get a refurb one from Apple (some were going for 380 bucks), plug it into your old screen and keyboard and you are sorted for no more than 500 Bucks and you can run windows and Mac OS.


Don't but a G4 or a PC!

Seconded. There's no sense in buying an outdated machine when you can just as easily buy a new computer, with more oomph, for the same price.

[besson3c]

Coffee,

There are two areas you can focus your attention towards: programming, or graphic design. There is also some space in between for usability, interface design, etc. However, generally speaking, the best programmers are lost in Photoshop and the best designers can't program worth a crap. Of course, there are the occasional exceptions.

In order for a site to really sing, you need both of these skill sets. In the industry, this is often achieved by pairing art directors and such up with programmers/coders. Lots of people make the mistake in trying to develop sites with addressing one and not the other, and the results vary, but it almost always pays to have a good handle on both.

For web programming, you could use literally any computer that exists on the market - the horsepower needs are absolutely minimal. All you really need is a good text editor you like, and if you have your own test environment, a server that will run the languages you want to develop for.

As for graphic design, this is where the requirements can increase a little. However, since web artwork is low resolution 72 DPI, even there, you could probably make do with any computer on the market.

Before even considering which path you want to go down, I would think very carefully about where you want to focus your energies. If you want to develop for .NET, ASP, or Cold Fusion, your choice is clear. If you want to get into graphic design but perhaps also get into doing other sorts of graphic design outside of the web, your choice is pretty clear there too.

Before you go matching up hardware and budgeting your money, I would think very carefully about all of this. If you are really on a budget and are interested in programming, honestly, an old PC running Linux would be superb, and quite inexpensive.

[Chuckit]

Mac color management is still a million billion times better than on any other platform I've seen.

[TechniCT]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Before even considering which path you want to go down, I would think very carefully about where you want to focus your energies. If you want to develop for .NET, ASP, or Cold Fusion, your choice is clear. If you want to get into graphic design but perhaps also get into doing other sorts of graphic design outside of the web, your choice is pretty clear there too.

Can you expand this some? What choices do you mean for the programming side?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by TechniCT 

Can you expand this some? What choices do you mean for the programming side?

Web programming consists of a mix of different languages. At its most basic level is HTML (also XHTML, which is very similar). Javascript often supplements basic HTML, as does CSS for dictating display and layout.

If your site's content is more dynamic or requires more logic than simply "display this content this way", you will need to step into using a Middleware language. Middleware languages include Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP), PHP, Perl, Ruby, .NET, Java, ColdFusion, and a host of other languages. If you decide to provide Adobe Flash driven content, you may need to learn some Actionscript, which is the scripting language provided within Flash.

In addition to these middleware languages, a database is often a part of the picture for storing content, providing fast searches of content, and allowing easy manipulation of data. This data could be the contents of a company inventory, or if you are using a content management system for managing your website content through a web interface (as most semi-large to large sites do these days including MacNN), news stories or page content is often stored in a database.

Fortunately, database query language has been standardized into a relatively simple language called SQL. SQL-driven databases include MySQL, PostgreSQL, MsSQL. Other popular databases include Oracle and Sybase, the former designed for big enterprise.

These databases are designed to interoperate with a middleware language. PHP and MySQL is a very popular combination, and MsSQL is commonly used on Windows.

The reason why all of this is relevant is because there are certain limitations in the combinations you choose here:

Webservers:

- Apache (Mac and Windows)
- IIS (Windows)

Middleware languages

- PHP (Unix and Windows)
- ASP (Windows)
- .NET (Windows primarily)
- ColdFusion (Windows)
- Ruby (both)
- Python (Unix, don't know about Windows)
- Perl (Unix, don't know about Windows)

I'm into PHP, so I really don't know much about these other languages and the platforms they run on. However, I do know that some of these languages generally work better on one platform than the other. For instance, Apache and PHP are both very Unixy, as is Perl.

Databases:

- MySQL (both)
- PostgreSQL (Unix)
- Sybase (don't know)
- Oracle (don't know)

I hope this helps, I'm sure others here will help fill in the gaps. I have a lot of knowledge in a few specific areas since I live and breath PHP and Unix, but rather unbalanced knowledge because I'm an idiot when it comes to anything Windows.

[Coffee1970]

Thanks everyone for all your help....gave me much to think about.....appreciated.
Brian.

[sushiism]

Web Design is 100 times better on the Mac, Photoshop is better because it doesn't have the rubbish MDI interface like windows. Also it uses the system wide colour picker so you can make libraries of colour and use them across programs.
Textmate is a better text editor than anything on the pc side
CSSEdit is better than anything on the pc side
Automator etc make batch renaming files easy
Transmit is excellent

Things like Ruby on Rails are easier to get set up, runs on Apache which is more common than IIS

[besson3c]

Unix also makes an incredibly useful companion to web design with tools such as rsync, scp, parsing through log files (providing you have access to them), the MySQL client, grep, and all of the file operation commands to save your ass when the OS X Finder bails (which it does frequently) for when you aren't using FTP/SFTP but instead are connected to a network volume in the Finder.