New intel Imac

I have ordered a new Intel duo 2ghz Imac with 1.5gb ram and it should arrive tommorrow.

I am a little worried because i've read that it runs powerpc applications such as photoshop really slow.

The main programs I will be running are:

CS2 Photoshop
Macromedia Freehand MX
Microsoft Office
World of Warcraft


Shall I be worried? This is my first mac at home and maybe its ahead of its time? I am switching from a very fast PC, however designing is never the same on a PC.

What experiances do other people have?

By all accounts CS2 and Macromedia are not yet universal binary. Therefore they will run under Rosetta and thus slower than you are used to. MS Office and WOW should be ok I think.

I'm sure that someone will correct me if I am wrong.

After looking into thos more I have found that there is a patch for WoW that makes it binary. I hope the others do this.

I am used to a G5 and G4, will it be much slower than these? I've had problems on the G4 opening large files in Freehand where the images don't show up. I pray this doesn't happen.

Microsoft hass not yet released universal version of office...

How realistic Adobe will release a patch for CS2.

Is binary a total conversion of code?

This link will help.

http://www.adobe.com/products/pdfs/intelmacsupport.pdf

Thanks. It seems i'll have to wait till adobe release the cs3

Indeed you will. I have not used an Intel Mac yet, but I'm sure it can't be too bad... As much as I hate to say it though, this 80% speed figure Apple bandied around about emulation speed has been shattered it seems by all accounts, and I had been warning that this speed figure was overly inflated before the Intel Macs were released.

Emulating a G4/G5 chip isn't a simple business and as much as it has become the vogue to deride the G4 chip; it is actually a darn fast CPU and to emulate it isn't a small task.

However when CS3 comes along, I am very sure it will be in an order of magnitude faster. I have read reports of native Intel stuff such as OS X, iLife etc. being so much snappier on Intel than PPC--that I can kind of believe in a way.

In the meantime, I should imagine that CS2 is usable if not super fast. The fact you have 1.5GB ordered in RAM is a good thing, I have heard that the more RAM, the faster the Rosetta emulation; which makes sense.

Vicky

when running Photoshop CS (not CS2) on my mini, it seems to run about as fast as I was used to on my G4 1GHz and 1.25 mem. (but don't quote me on it )