Reader's Comments - Index of - Free

Choosing a Computer System for Digital Imaging
-- Per-Christian Nilssen, January 25, 2002
Scott Hill is right on with his comments, I too use a Canon FS4000 scanner at the
input end and an Epson 2000p at the output end, and I am very pleased with the
prints I produce with these peripherals. My computer is a thrift shop mac 7300 that
I maxed out to 512 megs of ram it works fine with photoshop elements and the
Canon scanner plug in.
-- Richard Alan Fox, January 25, 2002
I am just about to decide for a (probably Epson 1290) printer and have already a
scanner and computer. So, information about reasonably priced system calibration
methods, tricks and solutions are of interest for me. I have already found a few
articles that I will add to the links below. If others know more resources, I would be
glad to hear about them.
-- Philippe Wiget, January 31, 2002
Nice article, Darron. However, I would argue a few points. SCSI hard drives , in
my opinion, are still a better way to go. 1-They don't bog down the CPU when
under heavy load. 2-If you ever do run out of ram, and it does happen, you won't
think your computer just died. 3-And lastly, when opening and closing very large
100 meg or larger files it makes a huge difference. I run a P4 at 2 gig with 1 gig of
fast RDRAM and a Seagate Cheeta spinning at 15,000 rpm. With access times
around 3.6 ms and throughput near 70 megs per second, it does make a big
difference in my work time. At $100 an hour, the SCSI drive has already paid for
itself a couple times over!!
As an example, I just opened a 100 meg tiff file in less than 1 second, rotated it 90
degrees in less than 1 second, and closed it in less than 1 second - while still on the
internet AND running other programs! Photo manipulation is very time consuming
and every bit helps. As for which platform is fastest, that's like saying which is
faster, Ford or Chevy. It depends on which Ford or Chevy, who the mechanic is,
and what he has done to the engine. If anyone would like to do some comp tests, I
am game. We would need the same image. (Easy enough to download a large
image from one of the digital camera sites and make it larger - say 100 megs). I am
always interested in faster ways to work!!!
Again, a great article.
-- Steve Bingham (www.dustylens.com), January 31, 2002
http://www.photo.net/photo/computers (16 of 33)7/3/2005 2:19:07 AM