Which power MAC to buy

Question

I am currently running a Imac, 20 inch G5 1,8 Ghz, 2 GB Ram, 4 external HD's.
Usage the standard e-mail, surfing, office stuff and digital raw photography. The Imac is fine for all the stuff, exempt the digital photography. Limits: Using Light Room or CS2 forces a 100% processor load. secondly the screen real estate. Raw files from D-70 and D-200. Ammount of files per year 5000-10000.
For the digital photography I want to upgrade in the next half year and be safe for a couple years. Budget between 5000-7000. What would be your recommendation?
Concerns on my site:
1. Power mac G5 or Intel mac
2. single screen 23 or 30 or dual screen
3. ammount of ram
4. Quad or dual
iemke

Answer 1

For the digital photography I want to upgrade in the
next half year and be safe for a couple years. Budget
between 5000-7000. What would be your recommendation?
Concerns on my site:
1. Power mac G5 or Intel mac
2. single screen 23 or 30 or dual screen
3. ammount of ram
4. Quad or dual
Hm.. where to start.
You say you want to upgrade within the next 6 months.
Given that, I would personally choose the PowerMac Quad G5 over any of the other offerings. It is capable of running 16 gigs of ram, and Apple reports that it can support 2 SATA hard drives, but with a slight adapter upgrade you can run 5 SATA drives internally.
I have been studying Photoshop design at college for just over a year, and I just invested $3200 in a Quad G5. I decided not to wait for the "Intel" version ( if there is one ). Apple tech reps & sales reps told me a lot of various information on the Intels, but also said that until all of the software is re-written to work specifically on the Intel, MOST of it won't work at all.
The benchmarks for Photoshop are very nice in the quad, I have Photoshop CS and it is very nice, even with only the 512mb of ram that came with the system, but I managed to bog it a little with 150-200 meg PSD files.
If you want to spend $7000, here's how I'd do it...
1. Quad Powermac G5
2. 2 gb 533 DDR2 ECC (2 x 1GB)
3. 2 500GB SATA (for all those raw files)
3. GeForce 7800 GT 256 (this card alone will help over the 6600)
4. Dual 23" flat's
5. Airport Extreme + Bluetooth for future upgrades
Cost for that is $7176
BUT.
Find a local community college, sign up for a 1 credit refresher course in anything, cost, about 100 bucks, take your student ID to the nearest Apple Store ( or Website ), and your cost suddenly becomes.... $6321
And since you just saved $855 ( minus your school costs obvioiusly ), turn around and go with FOUR gigs of DDR2 ECC ram, the 1 gig chips, not the 512's... because then you can upgrade in the future, and your overall cost is now $6861.
So you just got 2 gigs more of memory by becoming a student, AND still saved $315 (minus the college fee).
You get the idea!
Hope that helps
I know when I went down to get mine at the Store, I saved myself $280 in taxes, and then I saved $300 off the top as a student, so I purchased the 3 year Apple Care warranty. And so far, it's totally been worth it. I love being able to call and ask any old thing I need to know.
I made the big switch from a 1.5 ghz AMD chip on a Windows XP machine that I built 6 years ago.
Photoshop is definitely better now
PowerMac Quad G5   Mac OS X (10.4.5)