Jane,
Could you share a bit more specifics on the extent of your experience
with computer graphics and animation on both platforms. This background
information might help some of us on the listserv to understand why you
have taken your position concerning MACs as the better choice.
Also, can you be more specific concerning the hardware and graphics
software that you are comparing? Is your opinion based only upon your
use of PageMaker only? Have you had any experience with image creation
and manipulation? Have you every worked with large video or sound
files, where MAC memory management limits the usefulness of the
product for Animation Video and Sound projects. Would you have
the same opinion after trying to use the most recent versions of graphics
and animation tools like Photoshop, Painter, Paintshop Pro, Poser,
Bryce,3D Studio Max, Lightwave, Cinema 4D XL, Maya or SoftImage
ZSI on both platforms with nearly equal hardware resources?
Were you using the same version of PageMaker on both machines. Did
the machines have the same amount of memory, the same CPU speed, the
same graphics card and the same amount of video memory? Perhaps the PCs that
you use in your lab at school lack the RAM, CPU speed, Video
RAM and other features such as hard drive space or perhaps they have an
older operating system on them. Either way, is it really fair to take your
opinion when your experience may well have been formed from experience
on cheaper, less robust machines. Do you realize that the "catch all"
term,
PC (Personal Computer) is applied to all kinds of systems, including MACs.
It is my experience that, in this day and age, most of the programs,
including PageMaker, run equally well on both platforms as long as the
platforms are
created with the equivalent resources to handle the demands of the
application and the project you are working on.
There are some limitations for each platform, however. For example, some of
the animation applications such as 3DStudio Max are not ported to the MAC
and others like Lightwave 6.5 restrict you to only type 1 fonts. You also
can
not run the Lightwave Hub on a MAC unless you have huge amounts of extra
memory and large animation projects frequently lock up the MAC because
of the way they try to manage the memory on that platform.
Bob
----- Original Message -----
From: <ejb35@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: MAC or PC
> I am a cross-platform person, teaching PageMaker for Windows, using a
> Mac at home. The difference between the two is in speed and ease of
> use, Mac wins here. etc. etc. etc
