Please help me, I know nothing about MACS:(

[shervinj]

Guys I need your help. My fiancé will need to buy a Mac/Apple for her job. She works in publishing. Where can you get a good deal on one besides the apple site. I know they don't make clone apples and there is no one like Dell cranking them out for 500 bucks so I am kind of stuck. Also what kind do I buy? She will be using a program called quark to do her work in. I see Imacs with processors at 800mhz which is not a lot for a modern PC. IS that a ton of computer for a Mac? If you have forums to show me or websites with pricing that would help out so much?:brokenheart

Guys here is what I know.
It needs to run Quark
I think they have a few G4's now so I don't think I need a G5
She doesn't mess with audio or video editing, just desktop publishing.
It could be a laptop or desktop.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

IIRC, Macintoshs have an extremely high IPC. meaning they can do more work with less. However, not knowing much else about macs except that only Apple itself and maybe one or two other companies produce them... uh.... yeah.

 

[sciencewhiz]

What is your price range? It sounds like it is as cheap as possible.

Have her get recommendations from work. Do they use G3, G4, or G5 processors? How much ram do they use?

You might want to edit your title so that people know that this is a mac question.

 

[Caly]

Yes, first, what does her job use?
Next, how much do you want to spend? If at all possible get the Middle G5, not the low-end G5. The middle price one is more bang for your buck. The Duo G5 is great for serious graphics use.
The G4s are nicely priced now, and there are a few higher than 800mhz.

 

[CQuinn]

If you live near a CompUSA or MicroCentre store, you can check out thier Apple sections to
get a better idea how they perform in the real world. You can take her to play around with
the laptops and see if they suit her more than a desktop.

But, before you go, you need to figure out what your desired price range is, so you don't
go overboard with all the shiny bits they tack on.

 

[Eug]

Which version of Quark and what OS do they use?

The newest version of Quark runs in Mac OS X, but if she's using an old copy of Quark, it will need either to work in OS 9 natively, or else under OS 9 Classic running in OS X.

The latter isn't a problem, since all Macs will run OS 9 Classic. However, if there is some reason that she needs to boot into OS 9 there are only specific machines that will do that. The G4 Power Macs can boot into OS 9, but the G5 can't, and neither can the G4 PowerBook laptops.

Or she could always run Adobe InDesign 2 which is supposed to be way better than all versions of Quark.