I am still in 2 minds about an iMac or a Mac Pro. I am a part-time Wedding Photographer. I use Canon 20D and later (I hope 5D) . Last wedding I came home with 1100 photos in Raw. I use Lightroom mostly then a little Photoshop CS2. I also use Proshow Gold to make a nice slideshow for each wedding. At the moment I have 8 weddings booked for the rest of the year. So I am not a full-time user yet. I hope to get more weddings and would like to have a good computer set up that can handle large numbers of raw files etc. I have been using a PC 2.2 with 1 Gb ram. I recently had a virus which forced me to re-format my HD.I had all important photos on external HD so no drama but I really want to switch to Mac.
Shouild I get a Mac Pro or an iMac 20"? I have priced the following options:
Mac Pro 2.66 with Radeon card and 1Gb Ram (upgrade later to 2Gb or 4Gb )or
iMac 20" 2.1 with 2Gb Ram.
I went to the Mac shop today. The 20" iMac screen was brilliant! After demo with the iMac I keep changing my mind from the Mac Pro it was so good!
I know the Mac Pro is much more upgradable but it is about $1200 Au more expensive and thats with only 1Gb Ram. I would have to use my existing display for a while. Would the iMac be Ok for what I do now? would I be wishing I had a Mac Pro in 6 months? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

The Mac Pro uses xeon processors that are a tad more grunty than the core 2 processor in the iMac. Having said that, I use lightroom to process my photo shoots (~600 at a time) on a 1.8 MacBook Pro with no problems...it would depend on what you're doing in photoshop and if you want it done that little bit quicker (or smoother).

The advantage of the mac pro is that it is expandable in almost all respects whereas the iMac is not. You can't for example add another hard drive or 3 to the iMac unless you go external.

If I were you I'd go the Mac Pro. You can build the cost into your price (average it over 3 years) and you can also claim it on Tax which will being the price down (edit: you can of course do the same with an iMAc...the point of course is that the difference between an iMac and Mac Pro over three years probably isn't a lot). Also it can be worthwhile becoming a ADC member. It costs $500 or so but with it you get a discount on your next purchase at the Apple store. I haven't checked it in a while but last I looked the $500 membership gave you a $700 or so discount on a new Mac Pro....I could be wrong (they may have changed it).

It's all depending on your needs though. If all your data is on external drives and you won't need to expand then the iMac should be plenty good enough for your needs.

Bartron

Both machines are a good investment. Personally I'd go with the iMac with AppleCare and a Ram upgrade (since you're already using an external drive you're on the right back up path)...

If you think down the track 16GB of ram, 4 hard drives and the chance to upgrade your video card are important maybe you should look at the Mac Pro, but at the end of the day, both machines will do what you want - and do it well!

The iMac is more than powerful enough, to be honest. I'm running Aperture on my (older) Core Duo iMac with no problems at all, and I understand that Lightroom runs faster than Aperture on the same hardware. Just be sure you max out the memory and add a big external hard drive for your photo libraries, and don't forget another drive to back everything up.

The iMacs are a great level machine. We are using them now for game development. The Core2Duo's rock. All of our PC's and iMacs now have them, and from a performance point of view compared to your old P4-2.2, a Core2Duo 2.16 will be about 3x faster ! Get the extra ram though.. for $260ish buck you can swap whats there for 2GB.

I just bought a new 24" iMac, and was torn between the MacPro and iMac... the 24" screen is amazing, and when you factor in the price of a screen for the MacPro, the cost difference is HUGE.

Also, just to note.. rumours are rife about a new iMac about to be released. It shouldnt stop you from buying now if thats what you want, but often Mac buyers get annoyed when their purchase gets superceeded soon after purchase. Unfortunately, you wont know more about the new version till it hits the streets, or gets officially announced by apple.

I'd have to say that the Mac Pro will hold its value longer and be current for longer, although the flipside is it costs more. If you go down the iMac path, get the 24", its definately worth the little bit extra.

i dont think you will benifit from the super duper mac pro. its really an overkill unless your processing HD video 24/7 or something rather :P

the iMac will be more than enough for your needs and if you can afford it... go the 24" those extra 4" are awsome.

I use Aperture pretty often on a 15" MacBook Pro and a 17" C2D iMac with dual LCDs, both with 2GB of RAM. The main thing Aperture loves is RAM and a fast video card.

2GB of RAM is nice, but I still find it sluggish, if you want the best Aperture experience, shell out for the Mac Pro, pop in 4GB of RAM (from a reseller or from overseas, Apple charges far too much for it) and get the X1950 video card option. And use dual LCDs on the Mac Pro, (dual 23" is awesome). Another benefit of the Mac Pro is RAID0+1, 320GB HDDs are so cheap, you can put 4 of them in there, run the drives in RAID 0 mode for speed and make a RAID 1 out of the RAID-0 sets so that if the HDDs do conk out, you aren't up shit creek without a paddle (no excuse for proper backups though).

But if that's beyond your budget, a 24" iMac with the 7600GT video card and 3GB of RAM (get a 2GB SO-DIMM and a 1GB SO-DIMM off the net for around $375 all up easy) will work well too

Thanks for all your replies. It seems the iMac would do quite a good job with what I do now. I think the Mac Pro would be bit of overkill. The 24" iMac is huge isn't it? I saw one the other day in the shop!. Now I have the problem of a new iMac just around the corner?
Thanks again to those who replied.

I reckon go for the 24", especially for photo's and stuff. It looks big in the shops, but when you get it home, you get used to it (at least, that's how I react!).

There will always be an update around the corner, if you need it now buy it.

Go for the iMac if portability is not an issue: I decided on the 20" C2D and it's a blast - computing has never been so much fun!

heh normally i'd agree , but in this case with WWDC less than 4 weeks away, and Santa Rosa CPU's speclated to be put into macs, i'd say wait to see whats released at WWDC.

I'd wait as well. If you're coming home with 1100 RAW files from a wedding, you'd benefit from the Mac Pro. More than anything, lack of RAM and slow HD's are what slows things down. Purely from that aspect alone, the Mac Pro has a major edge, even if you just got a dual 2.0 (though I'll always recommend the dual 2.6 at least).

A dual 2.6 with minimum specs built up with HD's and RAM purchased elsewhere will save you a heap than if you bought it all from Apple. 4Gb RAM and a 500Gb SATA drive or two for storage + PS scratch would make for an excellent machine.

When is the WWDC exactly? How soon after that would the new models be avialable do you think?