Windows or MAC

WestEndFoto

KnockKnock, the operating system rot that you speak of is easy to deal with. I have all of my programs on an internal SSD but no programs. I then use Macrium Reflect to take an image of the SSD every day. I have historical images saved that I know are clean. Every six or seven months I restore the clean image and update everything. That way everything runs like new. The daily Macrium updates are for other emergencies like dealing with viruses where I know the infection date or at least the "later than date".

When I move into my new place next year, I will have 150mbps internet and a Windows 2016 server. I have not quite figured out my data storage solution yet, but I will require the ability to store back drives in the bank's safety deposit box, which I do now. I will then have a desktop in the office next to the server and a good laptop to access my data with Photoshop and Lightroom any place in the apartment. Every room will have at least 2 drops with 4 jacks for CAT6A outlets. The patio will have 1 drop as well.

All of this will be on Windows 10. I have never had a complaint with Windows 10 (or even 8) using Lightroom and Photoshop and Macs are not as suitable for my job based applications.

BabaGanoush

DenverShooter said:

Just ran the BlackMagic Design speed test on my 32 TB Promise Raid 6 Array and it clocked 444 MB/s write and 513 MB/s read. The internal MPB drive clocked 36 MB/s write and 73 MB/s read. Time to install the 2 TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD drive in the MBP...

Denver Shooter

Compared with your RAID6 throughput, and based on several different bench marks I ran, including the BM test, I'm getting twice that with my RAID10 array. I was surprised to discover that a RAID array of HDDs gives much more bang for the buck than a JBOD bunch of SSDs. The performance numbers various Web sellers quote for their SSDs can be wildly misleading.

Ironheart

RAID 10 and RAID 6 are very different beasts, or horses for courses as the Brits say. RAID 10 has better performance, but lower capacity. Vice versa for RAID 6. The best is NetApp's WAFL, but that's a story for a different day...

DenverShooter

I wasn't that concerned about performance and a lot more concerned about drive failures and being able to replace bad drive(s) with minimal exposure of my data...

I almost got burned with a bad batch of HD and Raid 5 servers a couple of years back.. Something about the primary and backup servers having the same HD drives that all went bad about the same time (within two weeks).. Narrowly averted a major data loss.

After that close call my next set of servers were Raid 6 with hot spare.. I can live with the performance.

Denver Shooter

MegapixelSchnitzel

I dumped a Toshiba laptop in 2007 for a Macbook Pro 17... and I would never, ever, in a million years, go back to a Windows platform. I am running Yosemite on a 1.5 year old I-Mac 27" right now and it performs beautifully. So well as a matter of fact that I have no desire to risk an upgrade to Sierra OS.

DenverShooter

I am on the Appleseed Beta test program and Sierra is very very stable. Currently running 10.12.2 (16C67) on a 2011 17 inch MBP.

Denver Shooter

PB_PM

Nothing wrong with 10.12.2, overall, no worse than any of the post "free" versions that have come out in recent years.

Havoc

Thank you all for your comments....since my gear and files are all windows based...I'll be sticking with that platform based off of what I've read from all of you. I'm surprised so many are using laptops, I always thought that desktop systems had the best/more accurate color displays. Am I incorrect with this assumption?

WestEndFoto

If you want the best colour, you will need a specialized monitor that you won't find on a laptop. However, the you can always hookup an external monitor. At work I use a Windows laptop with two external monitors

DenverShooter

Havoc said:

I'm surprised so many are using laptops, I always thought that desktop systems had the best/more accurate color displays. Am I incorrect with this assumption?

ColorMunki Photo can be your friend and probably should be.

http://xritephoto.com/colormunki-photo

Calibrates your monitors and printers and provides amazing consistency among wildly divergent monitors and printers.

I have used one since 2011 for calibrating my laptop display, my external displays, my Epson StylusPro 7900 & Stylus Photo 2880 and Canon MX860 for all of the paper stock I run (Red River) and once you get it all calibrated everything matches and there aren't any expensive surprises.

I figured I payed for it in under 90 days.

Denver Shooter

tcole1983

Wow so many mac people. I just don't understand it. I know each to their own just as most here are shooting Nikon and others use Canon. I personally see just as many problems with Macs as I do PC. There is always compatibility issues with MACs it seems like and having to run virtual machine windows/windows programs.

I am not an apple fan...I have not ever been impressed with the few apple products i ever had. Maybe prebuilt computer wise apple does better than the PC companies, but I built my own last two PC systems and have had zero issues. My last PC lasted 7-8 years and I just built another a couple years ago because it couldn't keep up with the newest stuff.

I am now running an overclocked to 4.4 GHz Intel 4790K, 24 GB RAM, 2 - 2TB Toshiba drives, 500 GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO, 1 TB Seagate drive, and a 250 GB and 1 TB external drives. Probably my weakest point is the Radeon HD 7800 graphics card I have.

But back to the discussion...a properly built PC is just as bullet proof as any Mac. And just from people I know I wouldn't say Macs have no issues...they have all had hard drives die and some issues here and there too. I honestly have had very little issues with my built PCs. I am running Windows 10 and it really is pretty great. I went from Windows 7 and was hesitant to upgrade because Windows 8 was terrible, but 10 has been solid and has some pretty nice features. I have no complaints about it.

So just my $.02, but I built my desktop PC for ~$1200 total with monitor and it is super fast and has no issues. It probably does take a bit more knowledge to keep a PC working well and I will say my work laptop has issues every once in a while, but again...it is a Dell running in a work environment. I don't run into those same issues with a computer built with quality parts I picked out myself.

DenverShooter

I have zero time to be a computer tech. Its a tool. It needs to do a job with the least amount of intervention on my part.

In a side by side comparison between 3 Dell's and 1 Lenovo laptop and my MBP, the mac uses 1/10 the amount of my time to keep up and happy. And considering how little I use the PC's its probably 1/20.

Even IBM says that support costs are less.

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/20/ibm-macs-less-expensive-than-pcs/

YMMV

Denver Shooter

rmp

Does anyone running Photoshop or Lightroom actually see a difference with RAID configurations? I can run speed test and see a difference, but it is hard to see a difference in photoshop or lightroom. (I'm using 64gb of main memory and 4 ssds in RAID 0.)

BabaGanoush

rmp said:

Does anyone running Photoshop or Lightroom actually see a difference with RAID configurations? I can run speed test and see a difference, but it is hard to see a difference in photoshop or lightroom. (I'm using 64gb of main memory and 4 ssds in RAID 0.)

Sometimes I think LR loads the thumbnails a lot faster with my RAID10 configuration of 4 x 2TB hard drives than it did when I had the same drives set up in JBOD, but at other times I'm not so sure. I haven't noticed any other improvements in speed, but that's probably because I almost always process my photos not in batch mode, but rather one at a time, which is a very slow process anyway. Frankly, I suspect the performance of LR depends a lot on the size of the cache and how full the cache is. I periodically clean it out and when I do, things seem to speed up.

FYI, I have 64K image files (raw and jpeg, including lots of big panorama jpegs) in my working LR catalog. The catalog is about 2 GB in size.

tcole1983

I actually have to say Windows 10 has cut down on the maintenance required to keep it running. It does lots of stuff automatically that didn't used to happen. I have spent very little time messing with updating or maintaining anything.

heartyfisher

Have a look at this .. Sysinternals was/is a great set of utilities that I used to admin windows systems/servers/networks

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062.aspx


The guy who used to run Sysinternals was a very vocal critic of Windows OS.. all his blogs made lots of sense and embarrassed Microsoft no end. ( reminds me of Thom vs Nikon :-) )

Guess what Microsoft did.. They shut him up.

How?

They paid him a huge sum for his company and employed him as one of the main architects for windows ( after windows 7. )

Vipmediastar_JZ

rmp said:

Does anyone running Photoshop or Lightroom actually see a difference with RAID configurations? I can run speed test and see a difference, but it is hard to see a difference in photoshop or lightroom. (I'm using 64gb of main memory and 4 ssds in RAID 0.)

I believe you can setup to do a preview 1/1 during import. This way you can go do something and when you come back the preview will load faster. I feel my slowest part is loading the preview.

proudgeek

Like many here, I use a Mac (have had Macs since the old LCII). I had to use a PC for work for a few months and considered leaving rather than continue to struggle with Windows. It was that bad.

For storage, I use a Drobo 5D, with 4, 3TB SATA drives, connected via Thunderbolt 2. Really like the set up. Had a drive failure a few weeks ago and the remaining three drives kicked in, automatically redistributing capacity. So bought a new drive, slid it in the empty slot, and everything automatically went back to the way it was prior to the failure. Very plug and play.

The only thing I would caution you about with the new Macbooks are the new USB-C ports (no more Thunderbolt 2 or USB 3). When I upgrade systems it's going to create some issues and likely put me in dongle hell. I've put off a new machine until the technology catches up with these issues.

tcole1983

But if you were going laptop I would probably do a Mac...I personally can't swallow the bill for one. I haven't used too many laptops, but Mac seems to have a better fit and finish for laptops. I personally use a desktop and I like I said before...for half the cost I built just as good or better of a desktop machine. I don't care to do much mobile computing. I only mess with pictures when I get home and put them on the PC. It all depends one your work flow and what you want to use it for. When I am not home I don't care to be messing with pictures. I have a netbook that sits unused most of the time. I have a tablet that I take for TV and mobile applications on a bigger screen than my phone.

I will repeat though that Windows 10 is pretty good so far...so I wouldn't let the operating system deter anyone. They have made it pretty hassle free and user friendly. However I know most graphics art and photo people use Mac stuff...I just can't get used to it myself.

Just a side note I went and priced out some IMacs...ouch! And they have kind of bad specs...still using DDR3 RAM and want way too much for it ($800 for $200 worth of RAM). Plus a 3.3 GHz I5 CPU is the best they offer. Just my $.02.

PB_PM

tcole1983 said:

Just a side note I went and priced out some IMacs...ouch! And they have kind of bad specs...still using DDR3 RAM and want way too much for it ($800 for $200 worth of RAM). Plus a 3.3 GHz I5 CPU is the best they offer. Just my $.02.

1. Top end iMac can be custom ordered with a 4Ghz Core i7 6700k, so your point is moot (although the upgrade is totally overpriced).
2. Not many notebooks are shipping with DDR4 SO-DIMS (iMac's use notebook memory). No augment about RAM prices, anyone with a brain would get stock and upgrade from a third party supplier.

Find a machine with a high end, wider than Adobe RGB, 5k ISP display with those specs that is $1000 cheaper and let me know. I still don't think it's worth it, which is why I'm building a new PC myself rather than buying another Mac.

tcole1983

PB_PM said:

tcole1983 said:

Just a side note I went and priced out some IMacs...ouch! And they have kind of bad specs...still using DDR3 RAM and want way too much for it ($800 for $200 worth of RAM). Plus a 3.3 GHz I5 CPU is the best they offer. Just my $.02.

1. Top end iMac can be custom ordered with a 4Ghz Core i7 6700k, so your point is moot (although the upgrade is totally overpriced).
2. Not many notebooks are shipping with DDR4 SO-DIMS (iMac's use notebook memory). No augment about RAM prices, anyone with a brain would get stock and upgrade from a third party supplier.

Find a machine with a high end, wider than Adobe RGB, 5k ISP display with those specs that is $1000 cheaper and let me know. I still don't think it's worth it, which is why I'm building a new PC myself rather than buying another Mac.

I will admit I don't know everything about Macs. Price wise it still seems steep.

BabaGanoush

@DenverShooter:

"ColorMunki Photo can be your friend and probably should be.

"Calibrates your monitors and printers and provides amazing consistency among wildly divergent monitors and printers. "

Read your post, and saw a similar recommendation from Thom Hogan, so I bought one to go with my new monitors and now they are matched. Thanks for the recommendation.

PB_PM

tcole1983 said:

Price wise it still seems steep.

Lets put it this way, that high end 5k display is most likely in the $800-1000 price range on it's own. Throw in $800-1.5k for components that various models have, and a $200-500 Apple tax and you're at the price. I'm not defending it, that's just the way things are with some brands.

It's always cheaper to build your own machine than buying a branded one, no matter who it's from, Asus, Dell, HP all have a markup, some more so than others. It's no different than buying a Toyota Avalon vs a Lexus ES, they are basically same car, same engine, power train etc, but different shell and a few underside tweaks, but the Lexus is $3k more.

DenverShooter

BabaGanoush said:

@DenverShooter:

"ColorMunki Photo can be your friend and probably should be.

"Calibrates your monitors and printers and provides amazing consistency among wildly divergent monitors and printers. "

Read your post, and saw a similar recommendation from Thom Hogan, so I bought one to go with my new monitors and now they are matched. Thanks for the recommendation.

Getting all of my printers to make identical prints that matched my monitors (with the understanding that monitors are transmissive devices and prints are reflective media) was huge. I spent untold hours, ink and paper trying to make that happen and the ColorMunki fixed it all in about an hour.

Glad it worked for you!

Denver Shooter

Snowleopard

I will start off by saying, I love my Mac Plus that has no hard drive and 2 floppy drives and a SCSI port on the back. I also love my SE30, Classic, Color Classic, IIcx, IIFx, LC, LCII,LCIII and Quadra 950's (Photoshop 1.0.7 for "Mac OS" is great.)

Then came the Power PC based Mac's they were cool and I have a few of those, even the 3rd Party clones that Steve Jobs got frazeled about.

But then Apple changed. They started using off the shelf Intel processors and ATI and Nvidia graphics cards because their hardware was meeting a quick and painful death working with Motorola and IBM.

Heck, I even have a NeXT Cube (props even anyone knows what those are).

When I look at Apples line up over the past 10 years based on the hardware alone, you are basically paying 50% more out of your pocket for last years technology (From Intel, ATI (Now AMD) or Nvidia) and OS X or what ever they call it now is not worth 50% more than the Free version of BSD with X Windows over the cost savings of a Windows based PC.

It gets worse when I hear people complain about how slow their $1500 Macbook is because their Hard Drive or SSD is 95% full and you cannot pop open the case or remove a cover with a few screws and upgrade your hard drive or ram anymore,

Your $1500 Mac has now become a $1500 brick/door stop/ rock, what ever you want to call it. It is great for holding the door open to let the summer breeze roll though the house.

The rock in my rose garden was free.

By the way, If you think Mac OS/ OS X or what ever fancy name they give it every other week is free of viruses, malware, etc; start doing your research. They are not immune to viruses. Anyone that tells you that is not being honest.

Steve Jobs made the mistake of saying that Mac's are free of viruses at one of the big media events and within 24 hours a good percentage of macs got infected and they had to do a update to Mac OS / OS X to fix the problem (that Mac's apparently don't have.)

What I have found is that consumers are bombarded with the apple propaganda and when their mac's have serious issues, they blow it off, but if windows has an issue, the sky is falling.

Secondly how can you compare a $1500 macbook to your $400 budget pc, of course there is no comparison, a $400 pc is going to be slower than a $1500 mac.

Compare a $1500 pc to a $1500 mac and you might think a little different. And that $6000 Mac Pro black plastic trash can. A custom built $6000 PC needs a completely separate post/thread. And it will run circles around the mac pro.

By the way, The people running $6000 pc's with 4 or 8k screens don't have problems with how long it takes LR or PS or Capture One to load catalogs that contain 1000 50mp photos in them.