Re: digital question #2

I had no options: the machines I had for my daytime job were running
various flavors of OS X, one machine at home was capable of running it
(but hadn't come with it!), everything else at home was running earlier
versions of the Mac OS (including a venerable, and dependable, Mac IIci
running OS 8! We used it as a firewall running NetBSD...). PhotoShop was
running in several versions and we really needed to standardize
everything to reduce the confusion. Sooo...

The 8500 (which has a G3 card in it to speed things up) is running 9.2.2
and PhotoShop 7. It's basically at the end of the line. I use it with my
SCSI Polaroid slide scanner (which still does a great job). The iMac
_was_ running 10.2.8 and PhotoShop 7(it crashed, hard, and has been laid
to rest...the 120 GB hard drive was removed and put in a Firewire case)
and did a great job with the USB Epson flatbed scanner; the wife's 12"
iBook (the 2USB/Firewire model) is running 10.2.8 (and now runs the
scanner); the 7600 is running OS X server 1.5 (yup, nothing special but
it DOES serve up the pages! http://www.angrek.net ...spent the weekend
getting it work through the firewall and satellite uplink!), my
"government-issue" G4 AlBook is running 10.3 Panther and PhotoShop CS,
and the Sony Vaio Picturebook is running Windows 2000, but that's
another story entirely!

We're slowly trying to move away from SCSI (I put an IDE card in the
8500 so I could put some larger -- 120 GB -- drives in it), thus the USB
scanner and printers.

Judy, the upgrade to 9.2.2 is DEFINITELY a worthwhile thing to consider
as it is the "state of the art" for the 9-series OSes...there are some
network enhancements that make life a little easier. Having said that...

The capability of PhotoShop CS to "natively" read RAW camera files
cannot be overemphasized. I DO use the Canon File Browser and Canon File
Viewer Utility on the 8500 under OS 9.2.2, but I have nowhere near the
"control" over tweaking the files with it that I have with P-CS under OS
X. There really is that much difference, both in terms of controls and
in terms of workflow.

I am extremely loath to "tell" anyone to change their way of working,
but this is one change that, having had to do it myself, I can honestly
say that it has made a world of difference and I wholeheartedly
encourage one to do what you can to make a transition to using OS X. And
by that I mean a "transition" of SLOWLY shedding the OS 9-specific bits
and gradually replacing them with ones compatible with OS X. Something
which, sadly, is easier said than done...

Some of the obvious things to do are to increase the amount of RAM in
your 9.2 machines (if possible, max it out)...another thing that people
miss is that putting a faster hard drive will substantially help out in
speeding up the overall "snappiness" of a system, too! (Faster file
access by the applications and of course PhotoShop uses hard drive space
for its' scratch disk, so a faster drive will speed it up, too!)

Dennis

Sandy King wrote:
> Judy,
>
> I resisted switching over to Mac OS 10 for a very long time. In fact, I
> installed it once about three years ago and felt a little lost with the
> navigation features and went back to System 9.2. However, I finally made
> a full switch about a year ago and am now very glad I did. And even
> though it is true that certain devices and software will not work with
> OS 10 you always have ghe option of working in Classic operating system,
> which comes as OS 9.2.2 with OS 10.
>
> On the whole my opinion now is that OS 10 (I am currently running
> 10.2.8) offers quite a number of enhancement features that make my Mac
> G-4 an easier machine to work with. This is especially true in the area
> of driver installation, network use, and ease with which updates to
> software are can be obtained and installed.
>
> I do still miss certain features about OS 9 however, especially the ease
> of navigation which for me is still more complicated with OS 10.
>
> Sandy
>
>
>

-- 
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"That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief
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