New PC for Photography Business?

Off Topic
1

Im in the market for a new PC

I run my own photography business mainly catering for nightclubs. I am effectively one of those dudes that takes pictures of hot girls and then gives them a card with a website for them to go check it out. At the minute I dont do any major editing except crop, resize, lighting etc… and its mainly in picasa as its quick and easy. I am currently running a HP laptop, 2.2ghz dual, 4gb ram, 128mb graphics and it is getting the job done at the minute.

I am however about to launch my own website, so i dont have to use any one elses and i can reap the rewards of the advertisement. My friend is doing the web editing at the beginning but after that I will be doing the maintenance and everything myself. I also hope and pray that having a website brings me more work so therefore i have more editing to do. the main timely thing is making slideshows of the pics for the clubs. It takes about 45min for my laptop to burn a 30 min slideshow. Its only burning at 8x, so an upgrade here is highly desirable.

Another timely thing is watermarking pictures. I can batch process 2 sets of pictures at once on my current machine but it render the laptop useless. I assume another 2 cores will mean i can watermark 2 sets and still use the computer?

I have searched high and low and i think i have found 3 good machines. My budget is below £500. I have a 32inch HD monitor already so I can spend all the cash on the machine.

The options are:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/167729

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_X3300_AMD_Triple_Co…

Computers, Monitors & Technology Solutions | Dell UK either the second best one or if i can get a little more cash together the top end model.

I just cant decide what to get? Any suggestions would be awesome.

The mesh seems the best value for money but ive never heard of a mesh. The acer is good but its only a triple core and has only 512mb card. The dell is good too but a bit highly priced.

HELP

Thanks
scott

2

I make my living doing photography/graphic design so I might be able to help. :slight_smile: I’ll assume that the sole purpose of the machine will be for “work” but if you’re a gamer it changes things a little. The video card doesn’t really matter much. If your using Photoshop CS4 it has some cool features but in the end it won’t make or break you.

Processing power (CPU) will affect the speed of your RAW conversions and when you export your images to smaller jpgs but truth be told, unless every second is crucial to you, most modern processors will be fine. In theory a quad core would be better but only if the software can utilize it. Sometimes a dual core still wins the race. Is the current PC slow burning the slideshow or rendering it? How many pictures are we talking about and how long does it take?

I would buy the least expensive PC as long as it has 64bit OS and more than 2 memory slots so you can easily add RAM in the future (Start wih at least 4gb). With the saved money buy a BACK-UP HARD DRIVE. No if ands or buts about it. You NEED one. Not at fun as spending $$$ on the newest gear but more important.

Then save up for something a little better than Picasa, like Adobe Lightroom. After that purchase a monitor calibration device (i.e. Spiderco). If you don’t have a calibrated monitor, at best your guessing what the images look like.

My computer was the cheapest part of my system. External backups (drobos), good monitor, monitor/printer calibrator far exceeds the cost of the PC and don’t even get be going about the cost of gear!

3

I got a used 64-bit quad core, 16GB RAM, 5x72GB 15k SCSI, dual 1000W power server for US$500 off ebay. I see no reason to buy new, unless you need the latest for gaming. With that, you could set up a raid-5, raid 1+0, or heck, even raid 1 +3 redundant. Plus, it fits nicely in the rack in my bedroom.

The only drawbacks are that it weighs about 150lbs, it could heat the South Pole, and sounds like a jumbo jet when all 853 fans spin up on boot.

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Read this thread I started a couple of months ago and beware of the Dell Laptops affected by this issue. My wife is an amateur photographer and shoots a Nikon D300. The other day she was doing RAW to JPEG conversions while rendering an HD video clip in Sony Vegas and her mother board was on fire. I’m pretty sure her Inspiron is about to be having the same problems that my Latitude had because her model is also affected with these issues with the Nvidia GPU…