New iMac Core Duo - Question from a designer?

Hello again guys,

Just a couple of questions regarding the new iMac's with intel chips.

As some of you may remember i posted a while back with some questions about the iMac G5.

well, i am still saving up for the iMac but am now seriousley considering the new intel one as with my discount it comes to roughly £20 dearer for the following system:

* 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512MB
* 160GB Serial ATA drive
* Keyboard & Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X

* 17-inch TFT display
* 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor
* SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW)
* ATI Radeon X1600 - 128MB GDDR3 SDRAM
* AirPort Extreme
* Bluetooth 2.0

Now, i would just like some opinions on whether this system would easily perform the following:

Video Editing (i.e. Final Cut pro, iDVD, iMovie etc...)
Photo Editing (Inc photoshop, Possible use of Aperture)
Web Design (Macromedia Flash, Dreamweaver etc etc...)
Word Processing (Microsoft Office)
Music Recording (Garage Band mainly)

Tasks like the above are what i want to be doing, things relating to my course and my work.

Any information and/or advice would be apprechiated.

Kind Regards,

Chris. :mac:

To be honest I can't see how the system in question wouldn't run those well, especially considering that many of the mentioned apps are from Apple and will already be Universal apps when you get them. The CoreDuo chip will simply make it that much better, IMHO.

is final cut pro univeral now.. or next version?

except for some of the adobe apps. until they make them universal, they will run on rosetta.

So all is good in the MAC + Intel camp then?

Regards,

Chris.

Well, as far as we know, yes. I don't think anyone has actually received their Intel Macs yet, so the jury is still out on the reality of it all.

MrChris,
Good evening. I think that the iMac you are looking at would be quite proficient at performing the tasks you desire. I will be making a similar purchase, although I am waiting for the release of Leopard; at the date I will purchase a 20" iMac, the latest revision. I think if you were to purchase the 17" iMac right now, or in a year, you would be a very happy customer. It wil perform the tasks you want well, though you must get additional memory, 1-2 gb. I hope this helps, enjoy your Mac purchase.

I can confirm that I have my Intel Imac and found the performance to be the same if not faster than my G5 in most of the adobe CS2 suite.

I dont think Final cut pro 5 will work

None of the Pro apps are Universal yet and they ahve also stopped selling Final Cut Pro separatly. When they release the universal edition it wil only be sold as part if Final Cut Studio, much moe expensive. Current versions will run in Rosetta so expect much slowness.