It is a good composition, don't beat yourself up...

I think you should go for the MacBook Pro. Even though it wont be super fast running Photoshop right away it will be once the new CS3 comes out.

I like the way you almost can't tell which way is up. Stairwell shots often seem to confuse the human eye. well, to me anyway.

As for the Mac stuff.

No idea.

Sorry.

I love this shot, fantastic composition!

I can't vouch for the Intel Macs but my iMac G5 with 2Gb of Ram runs CS2, Aperture, Safari AND iTunes at the same time with no problems at all. Plenty enough power in the G5.

Macbook Pro. Great machine.

Alternatively, if you don't feel you want to cough up for a macbook pro, powerbooks second hand or from the apple refurb store have dropped in price quite a bit.

I wouldn't suggest linux if it's new to you, you don't feel comfortable on command line and you want to save a few frustrating afternoons. You definitely won't get that "it just works" feeling with macs. Linux distros are getting there (I was pleasantly surprised with the ubuntu installation), but not yet.

What do you want the server to do anyway?

As Christopher wrote, I also would go for the MacBook Pro and would use the G4 as the server. CS3 will be out in half a year (I think) and the new Apple notebook wold be an excellent choise already thinking in the future. On the other hand, I believe Intel will releade a new Core Duo chip in a couple of months that will boost speed and productivity. So, prices of the actual MacBook Pro will drop and it's possible to get that notebook for a good price. It's a difficult choice for sure.

Heh, great shot. Almost getting vertigo here at my desk. ;)

The (lack of) depth of field is great.

One other option... Wait a couple of months until the power macs with intel chips come out (one friend was told in the apple store it would be next month... I have heard November and that's when I am having one ordered for me at work)... use your g4 as a server and share the ibook when you need to go on the road and can settle form something slower. I have a powerbook g4/400 that I hardly use for anythign anymore now that I bought one of the last g5 imacs before they went intel. I don't care much about the intel, to be honest with you, except at work where I have to do testing on a pc, and i'll be able to run virtualPC at pc-native speeds in a window on my new mac. I can't wait for that thing. Regardless ,it's good to have options. I guess my point about the powerbook is that I have found at times, portability to be over rated. It has it's advantages, but you have had a powermac for a while now and are used to working at your desk. I was the same... and then I got the powerbook thinking I would take it all over the place... and lo and behold, I set it up on my desk and maybe went portable like 3 times with it... and only into my living room so i could watch tv while working.

I did'nt know if I was looking up or down the stairwell at first until I saw the figures. Nice One. MOONHEAD

Great shot btw.

I use a 15" Powerbook and CS2 runs fine. I would go with the Macbook Pro for the fact that it's portable and the features on it are one of a kind.

Very difficult choice. But I assure you I ran CS2/Safari/iTunes/ and sometimes Dreamweaver and Flash at the same time and I will start noticing it slow down but just CS2 alone it's not bad at all.

I use a MacBook pro and CS1 and have not noticed a slowdown from using CS1 on a G4. I would go with the MacBook Pro. A universal version of CS should showup soon.....

love stairwells and I'm really into cross-processed lokk at the moment and this is kinda into that category ;)

as for the server/macbook/g5 scenario I thought I'd give my opinion:

Firstly you mentioned needing a server but not really why you needed it... I'm guessing its file sharing/print server/usual malarky... but getting one wouldn't resolve your G4 woes

Intel Chips: wait a while before investing... benefits are negligable at the moment IMO... especially when considering how much it will cost you.

I'd reccomend:
---------------------------------------------
Cheap server: Something really cheap.
800Mhz, 256MB-512MB should be £50-£80ish and should do most little things, make sure its ATA 100+ so file transfer isn't crippled by anything other than the network...
get it running ubuntu (linux) ;) server edition if possible

2nd User G5: While others are snapping up Intel Chips you could get yourself a bargain... check auction websites etc...

Good luck

I like the perspective and cool blue tones. The angles are a good break from the standard spiral stairway shot.

Why not wait until CS3 comes out to decide? New Macs may be slightly less expensive, Power PC G5's will be less expensive (but maybe harder to find), and you'll know if you need an Intel Mac to run it, or if it's even worth the cash to buy.

Awsome abstract shot. It took me a min to tell you were at the top looking down which is cool.

As far as the Mac stuff I dont know a lot. I have my first mac which is a iBook G4 12". But I think I would hold out until CS3 comes out then go fom there.

Fab angle and good dense space up top (if you catch my drift).

I like this :-)
All the colour folks at my place have just been kitted out with the latest G5, which is at odds to the rest of the company. Every other Mac user (G4 silver and Blue) is now being changed to PC. The only macs that will be left at the end of the project will be the colour studio G5's

Wait for buying the next generation of macpro this summer! (maybe for this apple expo 2k6)
Result of this choice: software speed well exploited on intel processors. (That I know, you are mainly going to use photoshop!) Hmm, CS3 is not coming before next january. Will need to be patient!
Otherwise, attractive success this cliché with Cyber-shot.

I’m in a vaguely similar position: squeezing every last drop of performance out of my G3 iBook (!!) (producing, and editing and post-producing in Final Cut Pro and various pro audio app’s [with the fan running far too much...]). I wanted to wait for a more powerful G4, then turned that into waiting for a more powerful G5, and have now pretty much put off buying a MBP until they start shipping them with the Merom processors—seems a shame to not wait another month-or-two to get the (rather more future-proof) 64-bit architecture, and its various bonuses: most obviously the increase in maximum RAM (theoretically 16 exabytes) over a 32-bit system (4 gigabytes [per processor]). The biggest slow-down at the moment is (even in such a well-made OS) the necessity of using VM (these days, encrypted on-the-fly, too, which doesn't help).

Even though Apple have explicitly said that Leopard will support PPC (perhaps, like Tiger, a 64-bit OS capable of running on 32-bit machines), Adobe may write their next major releases to take advantage of the new threading, etc. on the Core2Duo series processors (making it fast, cross-platform, and therefore a good-seller), in which case it would be annoying not to have waited a bit, and find your ‘new’ system can’t run the new code in as native a fashion as it might, plus you’d still be stuck with all the read/writes to a drive instead of in (true) RAM (expensive as that amount of RAM may be).

I think what I’m—slightly inarticulately and verbosely—trying to say is that it’s always the right time to ugrade, but it might be worth hanging on a bit to get the most out of a new generation of machine, rather than—effectively—a temporary speed increase on a (although potentially 64-bit, practically) 32-bit system. The G4 would still then make a fine server!

Anyway, sorry to take over your photoblog with all that: feel free to drop me a line if I can be of any help/use!

Nice shot, by the way!

I admire the techical and sci-fi feeling. It also looks very mathematical, and illusional; esp. w/ the never-ending staircases.

Just a reminder that the camera is only part of the battle. The person holding the camera makes the difference.

I really enjoy the angle and color tone of this photo. The movement of the man is nice as well. It appears as though that the two men in the photo are the same person, is this true?

Sorry, I have no advice on the computer situation. I am one of the few PC photographers out there. I can however vouch for having a personal server. It is nice to have a central location for your media and not hog up space on your workhorse machine. I did this myself several years ago, not being totally sure it would be a good choice, and now would not go without one in my house.

Wonderfull shot!
A subrealistic photography.

Congratulations!

hello david, first of all: niiiiiiiiice shot! the guy looks cool. now to your server story: buddy, i got the same shit here.
i had a big server tower running windows 2000 on it with about 1TB on harddrives in it. a manemachine with windows xp. now i'll gona change anything. i sold my server (anything except the harddrives). i'm gonna by a macbook 13" and put every single harddrive into a external case. with a usb-hub i'm going to work with all my harddrives just - the reason why? i only switch on the harddrive i need, the rest - switch off! i saves lifetime of your harddrives. i'm going to use a backup software for mac to save all my datas from one HDD to another. the other thing: you can buy a external RAID 1 oder RAID 5 (more expensive). there are raids out there which you can put into LAN so your wife can work on this raid at the same time like you.

you need more information? just feel free to write me an email.

Haven't checked this site out in a while - glad I came back... ;)

I'll add my voice to the "wait a while" chorus. At least until the next generation of macbooks. As far switching from desktop to laptop - contrary to one of the earlier comments, I switched from a couple of respectably endowed (at the time) networked pcs to a powerbook 12" G4 867. In the first few months, my use of the pcs dropped to nothing. I've since upgraded to a powerbook G4 1.5 - haven't touched the pcs for about a year. That's partly to do with loving OS X (though I'm not a rabid macophile - even X has its flaws...) but it's also largely to do with the mobility. It's been more of a problem NOT carrying it with me everywhere I go...

Beautiful shot, David! I like stairwells too...

As for the mac conundrum, I too am in a nearly identical position, although I do have the older G4 pro laptop and a dual G5 right now. I still want to upgrade to speed up the photo and video processing. But to me it makes no sense to until Adobe releases universal binary editions of its software. It could be three months form now or a year from now, but I would want to take advantage of the hardware that would exist at that time in the future--it'll either be less costly for the same stuff you would buy now or your could spend more and get even more improved versions. Since adobe software is the software I use the most often, it makes sense for me to wait. I suspect you are probably in the same situation.

David - I'm currently using an Intel Mac Mini and I simply run photoshop under XP. Boot Camp allows you to install XP as a separate partition on your Mac, or the program Parallels will allow you to virtualize XP with almost no hit as far as speed goes. The MacBook Pro's are amazing, you won't be disappointed!

The PowerMac G5 varieties are still very viable machines and will be for some time. You didn't mention why you need a server, but if it is just for central large capacity network storage (and not for http, ftp or mail serving, etc.), you can get along quite well with a G5 desktop and your existing iBook. A networked G5, with lots of added storage, can be your desktop workhorse and remote storage for the iBook, even without OS X Server. Add Remote Desktop to the iBook and you can even control the G5 remotely. With a Cinema Display (CD), the desktop is no more cluttered than a PB (if you put the tower beside the desk, that is). And there is simply no comparison between photo processing on a CD 23" and a laptop 17".

Of course, if you have more sophisticated server requirements, then this advice might change.

As for waiting, there will always be a better machine just around the corner. :-)

Good luck.

Again a wonderful work.

Lovely composition!

If you need help rigging up a PC with Linux, give me a hint! :)

blue and kinda makes me feel queesy, thanks. :-)

I have a dual G5, and it's not particulary quick when running Aperture, so would recommend you go for an Intel-based solution - I would wait for the G5 to be replaced.

Thanks all, for your comments on this shot and all the detailed advice on which computer set up to go for. As for the latter: I'm sorely tempted to get the MacBook Pro, but will think about holding off for a while, at least until the next generation come out. Well, that's the plan, but I may end up getting one anyway. I'll keep you posted.

Visually stunning shot!

Although you are not an expert it is moderately simple to configure an old pc as a very responsive file server using linux. I have an old Pentium 100mhz with a stack of IDE drives running Ubuntu linux which is one of the simplest distributions around. There is plenty of help available on the Ubuntu fora.

The file sharing hard drives are all configured as one logical drive with the reiserfs file system which gives great performance for windows clients.
I am not sure how it would work with a Mac.

You can buy standalone network storage devices, which will allow expansion via an attached USB port, however a friend of mine who has a buffalo drive tells me that it is very slow ( he uses it for archiving photos).

If storage is all you need, surely a firewire external hard drive is cheapest/most flexible option - swap it round when you need to use it on other macs? I have a cute 250GB Lacie which is great, and they do a fantastic lego-brick shaped one for the children amongst us ;-) Check ebuyer.co.uk, who have excellent selection/value. Lacie, Seagate, Western Digital, blah blah are all good makes.

Obviously, if you want to go down the wi-fi route with all that that brings (good and bad), that's a different story.

I'd go for the macbook pro, eventually they'll release an adobe that goes well with it :D as for holding out, i think i'd do that too, the new OSX is slated to be release at the end of the year :D

Whoa, very nice perspective and lines here Dave!

Great compisition and colour, original shot.
nice job