I too feel this limitation. I use Quickbooks for all my business accounting stuff and in the past all the Intuit products that I have tried for Mac have been horrible. There are two easy workarounds though. 1. Keep your old PC and use it simply for business, email, etc. Use the Mac as your “art computer” and the Pc as a business machine. 2. Run a Windows virtualization inside your Mac and then load Quicken / Quickbooks into the virutal PC terminal. This method requires some setup, and it has its risks, but it once its running it is very elegant.

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David Marx

I appreciate your input and the excellent tutorials you produce.

I don’t think that you are going to like my answer. My patience for the mysteries of the Windows operating system has come to end. Tjis is probably not what you want to hear but since you asked I would replace your old Sony Vaio with a new iMac. In my humble opinion, a high-end factory refurbished iMac is the best value on the market.

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David Marx

Thanks.

I used to be a PC expert but my knowledge of things Microsoft and Dell is slipping away. The Dell Mobile Precision M4500 looks like an excellent choice for serious digital photographers who are still using Windows. If I were you I would definitely get an Intel i7 chip and the 64-bit edition of Windows 7. I would probably buy one of these with 4GB of RAM from the factory but would definitely up that as soon as possible. I always advice buying from the Dell Small Business Division rather than the Home Department. You get a better warranty this way even if you are just an individual and not really a “business.” This looks like a great machine but I have not actually used one and I alway ask “why do you need such a powerful laptop?” Unless you can justify the extra expense wouldn’t a desktop be a better use of your money?

eSATA is an interesting drive connector. Unlike Firewire you cannot daisy chain external drives together using eSATA. Each drive requires its own eSATA port and some of the fastest external drives out there actually require two eSATA ports per drive! That said, I doubt that you need two eSATA drives. If I were you I would invest in one 1.5TB OWC Mercury Elite-AL PRO QUAD eSATA/FW800/400+USB2 Performance Dual Drive RAID 7200RPM for your primary storage and then a far less expensive drive for a backup. The backup drive can be connected via USB or Firewire 400. Speed is not a priority for the backup disk so there is no reason why it needs to be connected to a blazing fast port. Click here for a more detailed explanation of my photo storage system.

Best of luck and please let us know how you like the new toys!

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David Marx

I left the Reply below in the wrong place by mistake. I’ve now read all the comments here about the correct computer for photographers but I am really stuck with a PC for a number of unrelated non-photographic reasons.

Any ideas? Thanks,

Jack

Dear David,
I needed help with a hardware upgrade to handle Lightroom 3 and CS5. I scoured the web for ideas but stopped here. Your articles are great. Thank you.
As I am “ready to go” right now, do you have any updated (from your 2009 articles)recommendations for a computer and external hard drives. I am hard core PC, so the Dell Precision M4400 you suggest sounds great, but I see there is now an M4500 available. Is that a good upgrade of the 4400? I have not yet checked for updates of your external hard drive 2009 picks. Anything new I should consider?
Are multiple eSATA ports a problem? Can one mix one built-in port (available on the M4500) with SATA cards in USB sockets, for example? Your plan needs 2 eSATA ports, right?
It’s pretty exciting as I am going to do a complete make-over of my obsolete hardware/software so I want to get it correct. I am an enthusiastic amateur (you know, “knows just enough to be dangerous!)not a pro, but I store several thousand pics a year and spend a lot of time tweeking them in Photoshop (and noe Lightroom3)Etc.
Again, thanks for the excellent articles

I need to redo this whole article but right now my advice for most serious photographers and Lightroom users is to look for a high-end iMac. If I were shopping today I would look for a 27″ iMac with:

2.93Ghz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
8GB 133MHz DDR3 SDRAM using 2x4GB chips (You can max the ram out later for far less buy purchasing additional blocks from a Crucial.com)
1TB Serial ATA Drive
Traditional Wired Apple Mouse
Apple Wired Keyboard with Numeric Keypad

Add some fast external hard drives to this setup and I think that you will have the most powerful and user-friendly system on the market.

Hope this helps,

David Marx

I hope it will come soon, since I need a new computer and would like it to last for 4-5 years at least.

Nice to hear from you. Two articles that might interest you:

Upgrading Your 2009 or 2010 Mac Pro to a Faster CPU and/or More CPU Cores from Lloyd Chambers
Adobe Performance Benchmarking from Pfeiffer Consulting

I have found that adding more ram significantly improves the brush tool performance. You might also want to check out Scott’s advice on optimizing Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for better performance.

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David Marx

P.S. It was great seeing you in Boise last spring. Hope our paths cross again soon!

The only article I’ve seen referring to this is the one recommending multiple export jobs to utilize more of the system’s cores.

I’ve noticed needing more power for local edits with the brush and preview generation.

Thanks for your comments, and hope you’re doing well!
Missy