Posted by Luis Ortega on 04/21/07 10:12

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.

"Ken Maltby" <kmaltby@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:obadnXMM9a1DIbTbnZ2dnUVZ_u-unZ2d@giganews.com...

> Just curious, what is it the Mac provides that makes
> you buy it instead of a new PC? I mean if you want to
> run MS software, on the MAC? Did you find that you
> couldn't live without being able to run Windows
> programs? What were the things you needed Windows
> for, that the Mac couldn't provide?
>
> Luck;
> Ken
>
>

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