My dad has $400 set aside for a computer for my half-sister’s birthday present. I may or may not be able to chip in a little money, but I can at least help by assembling the thing. I was looking around on Craig’s List for a used Mac Mini, but I’m not sure if they are powerful enough. It would need to run Illustrator, Photoshop, possibly InDesign, or cheaper equivalents. I know the software gets pretty expensive, but I’m just worried about the platform for now.
#1: do you already have the software? If not, and you want cheap, I can recommend The Gimp and Inkscape. These are freeware equivalents to Photoshop and Illustrator, respectively. They aren’t as powerful as the Adobe programs, and on the Mac both need a bit of setting up, but you can’t beat the price!
For 3D rendering, there’s Blender. Blender is impressive and powerful, but it has a learning curve like a brick wall. When you first install it, it looks like the control panel of a 747.
One thing I would recommend is getting a machine with separate video memory. Some lower-end machines have ‘integrated’ video, which means that the display screen is refreshed out of system memory instead of separate video memory. Many graphics programs, especially 3D ones, hate this. I was specifically warned about this with respect to AutoCAD, for example.
Consider this new computer: the Acer Veriton M460-ED7201C Desktop Computer. It’s $649 Canadian, about $500ish US these days.
It’s within your price range if you chip in a bit. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 processor at 2.53GHz, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 160GB SATA II hard drive, a DVDRW-RAM disc reader and writer, Gigabit LAN, and is available with the Microsoft Windows Vista Business operating system (with Windows XP Pro Downgrade available). BUT… it has only integrated video, no separate video card. You’d have to buy a video card and disable the onboard video circuitry. So I would NOT recommend it.
Does your half-sister already have a monitor, keyboard, etc, and is just looking for an upgrade of the computer itself? Does she have a drawing tablet? That will make things much easier for using the likes of Photoshop.
Machines are so powerful today that as long as you’ve got a dedicated video card (like Sunspace said) it’ll be just fine for the applications you’re mentioning. The only time I’ve had a problem with graphics card was doing heavy work with OpenGL.
Gimp is very oriented towards computer vision fundamentals. It may be frustrating to use, but groking Gimp successfully will enable you to truly grok image manipulation.
Try to also consider Adobe Elements.
I was able to build a Dell desktop on their website for $498 that included 3 GB of RAM, 256 MB of dedicated video, and Adobe Preimere/Elements, FWIW.
My dad says he has a keyboard, mouse and monitor, but it’s most likely an old CRT. I’ll have to ask him about that. If you think something like the Acer would be OK with a video upgrade, I can handle that. But then maybe I could do it cheaper if I just get the parts online and put it all together myself.
If you can, get her a good sized monitor.
Trust me.
And you can get a 23-inch monitor for around $200 these days. If she’s doing graphic design, she can get a slightly-cheaper one that isn’t as fast in response as a ‘gaming’ monitor. Examples.
Wait, is she already a graphic designer or studying to be one? If she is, then she needs the Adobe suite, no ifs and or buts. The GIMP and Inkscape aren’t used in pro environments. Quark would be something to look into getting as well.
Also, RAM is a must. Graphic programs eat it like candy.
If she’s studying graphic design, the free programs are quite good for understanding the principles. If her course specifically requires the Adobe programs, though, that’s different.
There are student editions available, but even so, they’re expensive.
If she’s getting the Adobe suite for graphic design, she should get the Design Premium or Design Standard versions. They include Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. The Design Premium edition is $600 student pricing, and $1800 full pricing.
And this is where 64-bit hardware and OSes start to make a difference. If she’s processing large images in Photoshop, 3 gigabytes of RAM may not be enough, and that’s the roughly the limit for 32-bit hardware and OSes (Vista or XP that does not say it’s 64-bit, Mac laptop hardware before mid-2007, etc). Mind you, I have 3 gigs of RAM in my laptop and it’s done fine so far. But then I’m not making gigapixel images.
Also, does she have a scanner?