Are imacs or mac mini's good for prepress

[mwc]

We have a Mini. It gets very hot so I have it lifted up off of the desk. The USBports go wonky every now and then making a restart necessary. By wonky I mean the keyboard doesn't work and the Preps dongle key goes out. You can't put much RAM in this one and it cannot drive a large monitor. I wouldn't get one for production other than a Preps station or something like that.
I've seen the iMacs and they are cool but the "all-in-one" scares me.

My main machine is a mini - 2.53 C2D with 4gb ram, runs 2-23" monitors just fine (apple cinema 23"HD and a viewsonic) - replaced my G5 tower...
Got another 24" intel imac in production...and another mini doing prep work. No more towers for this prepress dept.

[frailer]

With you, mwc. What bothers me is that I've had two occurrences of display/mouse lockout on few-weeks-old 27" iMac. Have had to button off. OK, I ran fsck afterwards, and will do Permissions/Disk Verify this morning, but am not real happy about it. All that stuff locked in a confined heat-box.

[Grimace]

Changing out a hard drive should not be terrifying...

Agreed...but to cram all that stuff in such a little place is going to cause inconveniences like this. Plus you have to have the special Apple tool for the screwheads if you do want to do it yourself.

And don't forget those suction cups to gingerly lift off the glass display. :scared:  ...and good luck getting it all back together.

I've mentioned before I had to swap my drive in my 24", but I'll mention it again :wink:
I found a suction cup at Home depot for $2 and the Torx driver kit for $7 the next aisle over, followed the tutorial and back up and running within hours.
I'm not one to tear crap apart for "fun" but this wasn't too bad. Oh, and the $100 , 1.5 terabyte drive is 3 times larger and also faster than stock.

I don't know if I'd risk doing it on someone else's, wouldn't want to fry something not my own.

[gnubler]

I don't know if I'd risk doing it on someone else's, wouldn't want to fry something not my own.

That's why I didn't even bother. Plus it was still under Applecare - let one of their techs fcuk it up.

[gnubler]

Oh, and the $100 , 1.5 terabyte drive is 3 times larger and also faster than stock.

Apple's "no charge" charge for the replacement HD was something like $225 for a 500Gb drive. :laugh: What a joke if we actually had to pay that, and I'm sure many people do.

[Grimace]

Oh, and the $100 , 1.5 terabyte drive is 3 times larger and also faster than stock.

Apple's "no charge" charge for the replacement HD was something like $225 for a 500Gb drive. :laugh: What a joke if we actually had to pay that, and I'm sure many people do.

That was the driving factor for me to try the swap myself. I asked the Apple tech to ballpark a cost for me and said he couldn't. I asked, "Under a thousand?" in a frustrated attempt. he said, "I doubt it"

[gnubler]

Goodbye, Apple. I'm pretty convinced I will never buy anything directly from them again. Gonna get a replacement Mac on eBay or craigslist when the time comes.

[Farabomb]

Hackintosh. Not a good idea for a production workstation but would work fine for a home box. My Mac Pro came from the refurb shop. Don't even think I would buy a iPod at retail prices unless I needed one immediately.

[Joe]

Hackintosh. Not a good idea for a production workstation but would work fine for a home box. My Mac Pro came from the refurb shop. Don't even think I would buy a iPod at retail prices unless I needed one immediately.

I consider myself fairly computer smart. I tried a Hackintosh, for learning purposes only of course. I got the OS installed but could never get it to boot.

[prepressDog]

Great info.... Sounds like imac can replace the towers.
I mean there MACs.... Not PCs. In my years dealing... only minor issues... if any. Still have old G3 laying around....dont have heart to trash. or still hold on for Backup. Never know... (how many people can say that about PCs... and people wonder why you pay extra for GREAT apple Hardware / Software)

As long as they keep easy access to items... wonder if they will ever just get rid of the towers??

Wonder why or how... (never looked new imacs too much) they keep everything Cool??
Thought the great thing about the towers... was the all aluminum body and big fans blowing all that hotness out the back....

  (I have an intel 2 x 3ghz Quad-Core Xeon with 16gb Ram...lol. Dont laugh... but for all the ram and hype. Not as fast as I'd think. Dont get me wrong... its great. Can have whatever open for most part. Just the dual processing power... not that impressive. Seems like still have to wait till one thing finishes.... b4 can work on another. Now this is 3-4 years old.... Im betting that the newer imacs prob faster. And that would SUCK....cuz I think BossMan paid bout 5g's.... (16gb ram?? think he just said MAX out... and they overdid it....8gb prob just fine....LOL...listen to us talk...8gb RAM!!! Lucky to have a hardDrive that big back in the day....LOL  :azn:)

[frailer]

The new Intel processors run cooler than the G5s (PPCs), which is one reason Apple made the leap. Minis, for that reason, went from G4 to Intel. Am guessing the aluminium cases on current iMacs help, but they still get hot. Had they 'ribbed' the back, like LaCie external drives, they would have run cooler, but wouldn't be cool.  :undecided:

[gnubler]

As long as they keep easy access to items...

They're already not. Essentially they're just vertical laptops.

[Joe]

Great info.... Sounds like imac can replace the towers.
I mean there MACs.... Not PCs. In my years dealing... only minor issues... if any. Still have old G3 laying around....dont have heart to trash. or still hold on for Backup. Never know... (how many people can say that about PCs... and people wonder why you pay extra for GREAT apple Hardware / Software)

As long as they keep easy access to items... wonder if they will ever just get rid of the towers??

Wonder why or how... (never looked new imacs too much) they keep everything Cool??
Thought the great thing about the towers... was the all aluminum body and big fans blowing all that hotness out the back....

  (I have an intel 2 x 3ghz Quad-Core Xeon with 16gb Ram...lol. Dont laugh... but for all the ram and hype. Not as fast as I'd think. Dont get me wrong... its great. Can have whatever open for most part. Just the dual processing power... not that impressive. Seems like still have to wait till one thing finishes.... b4 can work on another. Now this is 3-4 years old.... Im betting that the newer imacs prob faster. And that would SUCK....cuz I think BossMan paid bout 5g's.... (16gb ram?? think he just said MAX out... and they overdid it....8gb prob just fine....LOL...listen to us talk...8gb RAM!!! Lucky to have a hardDrive that big back in the day....LOL  :azn:)

LOL...I still have a Gateway 386 I bought in 1990. :laugh: (And it runs)

[pspdfppdfxhd]

we're running the whole prepress department on ipods in tandem with mac minis. Hard to see much on the ipods screen though. But seriously, I've had a 27 inch imac for a couple of months and love it, i practically work in the dark so the glossy screen is not a problem. it's a 2.93gHz i7 processor and sometimes surprises me on how fast certain tasks go compared to the old G5, especially in Photoshop.

Guess we're kind of vulnerable with the all in one concept but hey, as prepress workers I'm sure we're ALL used to feeling vulnerable.

[Farabomb]

Great info.... Sounds like imac can replace the towers.
I mean there MACs.... Not PCs. In my years dealing... only minor issues... if any. Still have old G3 laying around....dont have heart to trash. or still hold on for Backup. Never know... (how many people can say that about PCs... and people wonder why you pay extra for GREAT apple Hardware / Software)

As long as they keep easy access to items... wonder if they will ever just get rid of the towers??

Wonder why or how... (never looked new imacs too much) they keep everything Cool??
Thought the great thing about the towers... was the all aluminum body and big fans blowing all that hotness out the back....

  (I have an intel 2 x 3ghz Quad-Core Xeon with 16gb Ram...lol. Dont laugh... but for all the ram and hype. Not as fast as I'd think. Dont get me wrong... its great. Can have whatever open for most part. Just the dual processing power... not that impressive. Seems like still have to wait till one thing finishes.... b4 can work on another. Now this is 3-4 years old.... Im betting that the newer imacs prob faster. And that would SUCK....cuz I think BossMan paid bout 5g's.... (16gb ram?? think he just said MAX out... and they overdid it....8gb prob just fine....LOL...listen to us talk...8gb RAM!!! Lucky to have a hardDrive that big back in the day....LOL  :azn:)

LOL...I still have a Gateway 386 I bought in 1990. :laugh: (And it runs)

I have most of my old hardware. Some has been through a flood and/or a fire and it all still works. PCs and Macs use basically the same hardware.