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Choosing a Computer System for Digital Imaging
One item nobody mentioned is you should not use multi-session CD-R because one
bad write will kill your ability to read the rest of the disk. Not to mention that namebrand
CD-R blanks are absurdly cheap now. The storage boxes cost me more than
the disks.
I'm a big fan of RAID 0 on-the-mobo with ATA drives. SCSI drives are just too
expensive and termination-tempermental. As far as reliability, all your irreplaceable
image work is stored on CD-R or other media, right? If not, I can still buy four
ATA drives and get mirroring (reliability) cheaper than the SCSI solution. And for
system crash recovery you DO use back-up software, right?
I have a similar problem with dual-processor mobo's. Good concept but the mobo
price is jacked up so far above single-processor versions it just isn't worth it.
The question of memory is a little trickier. The format (EDO, SDRAM, DDR) is
not so critical if you buy as much as you need up front. More important is to get
decent quality memory. You might not think this but some of the cheapest no-name
memory modules are unstable and will contribute to system instability in
mysterious ways. I do not really understand why this should be so but I have
experienced it myself and so have others.
The article did not dwell much on I/O's but any new box I put together has to have
Firewire and USB2 ports to maximize peripheral choices. Again, for me, SCSI is
entirely optional (been there done that, no big value).
-- Eric Arnold, December 18, 2002
Inkjet printers have improved tremendously in the past few years. Early color inkjet
printers had poor archival properties; the prints faded into oblivion in a matter of
months.
And exactly how many current inkjet printers offer "archival" print stability? Your
only choice is the Epson 2000P (since it has been around a while - I know there are
newer printers too) which is not exactly cheap, and the claims of archival stability
(100? 200 years?) cannot be verified in real life. There is yet no agreement among
the experts on how to measure archival permanence of prints by accelerated testing
- look at the Wilhelm research fiasco.
What I do know is that many prints I have made from Epson 870 printers are fading
after 6 months. They are turning orange. This is at least better than the 3 months
which my Epson 750 gives me. The papers used were Epson PGPP (3 months on a
750) and Premium semi-gloss (6 months, slight but noticeable fading).
http://www.photo.net/photo/computers (26 of 33)7/3/2005 2:19:07 AM