PS C3 concerns

Worm Holes #3

…I just received my Photoshop CS3 upgrade and it is a good news – bad news situation for me. The good news is all of the new upgrade features in CS3 from CS that I am using now. I am looking forward to putting into my workflow; a RAW converter that will read my Canon RAW files from my XTi, the smart sharpener to name just a few. I did not make the conversion to CS2 as I did not understand the benefits until recently when my friend Paul did a little what-if with the CS2 smart sharpener. I was going to purchase the CS2 for that feature alone at the end of last year, but then the CS3 announcement.

So now I have the CS3 upgrade software and into the system requirements, which is where the bad news is emerging. Darn. I’m running a Dell PC, which is about 5 years old, does have XP and we bought the state of the art box at the time. I know, that means it was really good for a full year. Regardless, now I read about the “minimum” recommended system requirements and that is not what I have. It probably means that I can load the CS3 software on my current system, but just expect molasses in the late fall: Slooooow. Now add to this my current battle with available Hard Disk space. I am thinking that my best option for right now is to run the CS3 software off my external Maxtor HD until I purchase a new computer.

Which takes me to my next quandary; Dell/PC or Mac? Complex because for my other business, I have four other Dell PCs and I need to have back-ups and redunduncy for that company (very neccessary cashflow!) I ran Mac’s for over 8 years and I like their systems.  The CS3 seems to be best optimized for the Mac systems, but in life there are compromises. So I would like to have a Mac, but it will probably be a PC, although today the differences today are not as great at they were 10 years ago. Now I am looking at a Dell loaded with what I would like: Mulitple Quad Core processing, a Raid 0 system with 3 each 500 G internal hard drives, etc, and it is looking like 7 grand+. Oh wow. That’s my Canon 1DsMk2! And a new computer was not in this year’s budget. Another groan.

Well, at least I think I have my temp work-around while I figure this out…..so now I need to load the CS3 on my external HD and hope for the best!

Best regards, Doug