Tboss_hidalgo
Posts: 4

I am a starting graphic designer and my boyfriend and I are thinking of buying a 'powerful' computer able to handle large graphic files, won't crash and commonly use in grapgic/web design industry. Since we were using MAC in school befor, all my designer friends are using it and personally I find it really, really good - I am leaning towards buying a MAC but my boyfriend think otherwise. He likes computer with Intel Centrino better because according to him it's wireless, you are always connected to web anytime - anywhere and you do not have to hunt for phone jack or plug in a special card to get connected to the net.

We want value for our money and because we are tight finacially at the moment we wanna make sure that it will the best choice.

Let me know your thoughts on this and hopefully it will help us in making a decision.

Thanks

Stan
Posts: 44

Macs can be just as wireless as any PC. This is true for connecting to the Net and any I/O devices.

Joe Gillespie
Posts: 528

tboss_hidalgo said:
He likes computer with Intel Centrino better because according to him it's wireless, you are always connected to web anytime - anywhere and you do not have to hunt for phone jack or plug in a special card to get connected to the net.

Sorry, but this is utter rubbish. To use wireless internet access, you have to be within a Wi-Fi zone or within range of a base station. It doesn't pull the internet in out of the air like a radio does. Wi-FI zones are typically about one square mile in a city - and non existent in rural areas.

Wi-Fi has been available on Macs for a long time and comes as standard on Powerbooks. It needs a card on a desktop machine because they are more likely to be connected to a local ethernet network (which is cheaper and faster than wireless). There would be very little point in having a wireless desktop machine - and you do want a big screen and fast processor for graphics so a laptop is not a good choice anyway.

Unless you really need to carry your work around with you, a desktop machine is more powerful, more expandable, more robust and cheaper than a laptop.

Whether you get a Mac or PC comes down to personal preferences, availability of the right software (and other hardware) for the job you want to do.

As for commonly used - Macs are traditionally more dominant in the print graphics industry, PC are more common for Web design. The initial cost of buying either is insignificant with the cost of software and general running over their working life.

I use Macs and PCs but I would NEVER use a PC for email. I have email disabled completely on both my PCs to avoid viruses. I don't have to worry about the Macs at all.