Upgrading to Intel. . .

My partner does pretty high end graphics, animation etc. and has pretty much tapped out his G4 DP 500.
A lot of programs we have are Adobe CS, After effects plug-ins, lots of stuff that isn't written for Intel yet.
I'm confused about how well those programs will run on an Intel Mac or whether they'll run at all, or in some separate mode (so green with all this).
We do need to upgrade him but I'm not sure whether we should get a used Non-Intel Mac like my G5 DP 2.0 or 2.5 and wait or whether we won't run into all kinds of software problems on an Intel Mac at this point. Any references or input much appreciated.
thanks
enzosf

I have a DP G5 at home and a (brand new) Core2Duo iMac at work and use CS2 quite a bit. I also used the CS3 Photoshop beta for a while. I've found the CS2 runs a bit slower on my Intel iMac and MacBook than on my G5 and with some filters and plug-ins the difference is very noticeable. I can't say that CS2 is unusable on an Intel computer, that isn't true at all. But it sometimes reminds me of how I sometimes started a task at work (on my G4 iMac) and then completed it at home to take advantage of my G5's speed.
Despite it's obvious beta state, I was very excited by the CS3 Photoshop beta. While my two Intel computers didn't blow away my G5 desktop running the beta, the difference between the beta and the older PPC version of PS substantial. I'm looking forward to getting my upgrade (and happy that work pays for it, not me!)
But now for the bad news. All our old plug-ins are PPC and will have to be re-compile (if not rewritten) before we can use them on our Intel computers. (I assume we could run CS3 applications in Rosetta mode and use our plug-ins, but that would defeat the purpose!) I faced this situation once before - when I made the shift from OS 9 to OS X - and I had to bounce back and forth between OS X and Classic mode for a while. I expect I'll be keeping CS2 on my Intel computers for a while.
Now back to your problem. Upgrade to Intel and buy CS3 to boot? Or take the smaller step of buying a G5 computer and waiting for all your plug-ins to be upgraded too? Were I in your shoes I'd look for a good inexpensive G5 desktop or iMac.

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