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Posted by Ken Maltby on 04/21/07 15:54
"Luis Ortega" <lortega@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:8slWh.5055$VT3.3443@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net...
> To be honest, the only reason I have for considering a Mac is that I want
> to use Final Cut Pro studio 2.
> At the school where I work I have a dozen PCs that I have built myself
> over the years to teach video production and animation. They all run
> Premiere Pro 1, After Effects 6, Photoshop 7, Imaginate, Poser 4, Flash
> MX, Sound Forge 6 and a couple of old cheap programs called Evolution
> Audio and Acid Style for music creation.
> We can make fine projects with this little setup but the numbers
> interested in taking the course are growing and I need more workstations.
> I can no longer get funds to keep expanding the numbers or keeping the
> software up to date because the school has evolved an IT department that
> is fully Mac and they won't spend money on my little niche art studio for
> PC stuff.
> My own art budget won't stretch to buying both art materials and keeping
> up with software and hardware for my computers, which now range from a few
> Pentium 3s with 768 ram and 20 gig video drives to some Pentium 4s with 1
> gig ram and 80 gig video drives, all on Win XP.
> None of them are really powerful to run either Vista or any of the newest
> Adobe producst even if I had the money for software licenses and media.
> The IT department can offer me money and support for Macs, and I can get
> another dozen Mac G5 desktops running FCP 4.5 studio and Flash MX and
> Photoshop CS2 for free, plus get on their network and print to colour
> lasers and not have to spend money for my current inkjet inks.
> My lab up to now is a complete standalone lab that has nothing to do with
> the school network because before they created an IT department, we had
> one guy who knew squat about netoworking running things and the network
> was totally unrealiable. I maintained my own studio and I know a heck of a
> lot about making PCs work by now but I know nothing about Macs.
> At home I have a much better PC which I also built, with the latest
> production type software for video and audio running on a P4 with lots of
> nice drives and ram, etc.
> I took a course last month on FCP 5 studio and I must admit that it was a
> very impressive and capable software, incorporating all of the useful
> features of Premiere Por 2 and Avid Xpress DV which I use.
> I need to know how to use it very well so I am considering getting myself
> a Mac Pro for home, but I can't afford, or want, to dump my useful Windows
> software so I plan to create a dual boot setup so that I can keep using
> both. My art studio will also keep some of my better PCs so my students
> will be using both softwares and I really need, and want, to keep up with
> my skills on Premiere Pro.
> The new Macs with Intel processors seem to have reached the right moment
> for doing this since they can run both Mac stuff and Windows stuff well,
> hence my decision to change.
> Also as a teacher, and buying through work, I can get a really powerful
> setup for a fraction of the cost of going retail or even as an individual
> educator. Some of the software will even be free for me, such as the OS
> and any upgrades to it, plus many of the software we use, including FCP
> studio, because since I need it for work I can also get it for my own use
> at home to keep up to date with my skills and ability to integrate with
> the school's work flow.
> It makes great financial sense to me personally and if the Mac Pros are as
> good as they sound, I will also have a pretty powerful personal computer
> to keep me happy.
> I sort of miss the idea of building my own and upgrading them as I choose.
> I was planning to upgrade my home system to a core 2 duo this summer with
> better motherboard and ram and get Adobe's CS3 video production bundles
> which are very attractively priced for teachers. But the difference
> between doing that and buying a Mac Pro desktop with dual core duos, 4
> gigs ram, and a couple of 250 gig drives with my school's help will be
> minimal. Plus I will use my current 20 inch monitor and my extra sata
> drives from my current PC to build the Mac Pro even more.
> I am doing all of the research that I can at the moment to convince myself
> that I am making an intelligent choice. For example, the info about
> needing a full copy of windows XP with SP2 and not an upgrade version to
> install on the Mac was a surprise. Luckily I do have one full copy of Win
> XP but with SP1 so now I need to research slipstreaming the SP2 bits onto
> a homemade installation disk. Reading the websites on it, it sounds very
> straighforward to me since I have been tinkering with command line crap
> since the days of DOS.
> My concerns are all with the Mac side of things since I feel like an idiot
> concerning the things that you can do to a Mac and I would hate to screw
> them up through ignorance.
> I plan to get this changed in August before school starts again and maybe
> by then the Mac Pro specs will have inched up a bit more. I may be able to
> get the dual 3 ghz zeons instead of the 2.33s that are in my price range
> now, for example.
> I just hope that the Mac Pro will be powerful and stable enough to make me
> not regret my actions.
> Sorry for the long-winded reply.
A school "IT department" "that is fully Mac" is bad enough,
one that has any control over client computer purchasing or
what programming runs on them, is way out of line.
There is no way a properly setup network should care
whether it's Macs, PCs, a network device, a camera, or
any other compatible item. It should be able to work
with anything that can be netted. It shouldn't matter what
OS is used either, MS, Linux, Sun, or any other, as long
as it supports connection to a network, (they all do now a
days).
The "IT department" itself should not be "all Mac" or all
anything, in fact using Macs as servers, may be possible
but hardly a responsible approach. For that class of
server, at least a linux server would make a lot more
sense. If they are using boxes that resemble Macs or PCs
instead of 19" racks and blades, then the boxes should
have "special" server MBs inside them and run a server OS.
They should have no say over the client computers on
their net, other than what impacts maintaining a secure and
smooth running network. That would not include requiring
any certain type or brand of computers. Having an "IT
Department" control a budget for all computers used in an
institution, is totally obscene. I smell kickbacks.
Luck;
Ken
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