IF computer question

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Kirstie

Kirstie

PFG, Picture Framing God
Joined
Jan 16, 2007
Posts
8,395
Loc
Berkeley, CA
At the WCAF we purchased IF with our Wizard 8500 purchase. We bought the software only as we did not see the sense in renting the computer and camera package for $99 a month forever. Now I need to buy a computer for the design area as the Wizard computer will be 50 feet away at the back of the sales room with the CMC. I am a PC neophyte, a Mac user forever.

I talked with Dell today and explained the set-up to a salesman. I want to eventaully add more terminals to the design area for POS and other IF modules. After reading the Wizard specs to the guy--"Pentium rated computer" he suggested I get a more powerful computer for my design area which would act as a server for the various future terminals and would have 2 hard drives which would back each other up, and any linked computers on a continuous basis. This set up would cost $1600, same price as the Wizard offering which comes with IF, but a much more powerful computer. Dell suggested staying with Windows XP (same as Wizard computer) as Vista could have problems talking to XP. Macs with different operating systems will link to each other, but as I said, I know nothing about the PC world.

The computer he suggests selling me is a Dell Precision 390 E6300, 1GB with two 360gig hard drives, DVD burner for offsite back up, a fancy video card, and a 3 year onsite warranty. 360gb is lot of space, I know, and I may go with a smaller hard drive(s). Does anyone who knows computers have an opinion? Does anyone know how much memory the IF files will use? I guess my other option is a back up hard drive like I have on my Macs, with automatic periodic back up.

Now I have to research the Canon Powershot camera. There are so many models out there, and I'm sure I can get a better deal than Wizard offered for $600. We also have to figure out how to hang, connect, and power the camera off tracs which hang from 17' concrete ceilings. I seem to have bitten off a lot of projects at once!

Thanks for any advice you may have.
Kirstie
The Framer's Workshop, Berkeley
 
I'm not aware of problems with XP being able to see Vista network shares. It would be hard to imagine it a problem though. There may not be complete interoperability because of potential new features in Vista, but everything that works in XP should be available. However I don't have any personal experience.

As for hard drives, you're only going to save maybe $30 each to go from a 360 to a 180, which is the smallest I'd recommend. For such little extra cost I would go for the 360.

The fancy video card is probably unnecessary unless IF tells you specifically that it can take advantage of it. However, you probably don't want to use a built-in one (if it's available - probably not on the Precision), but a basic one should be fine.

The biggest question (in my mind) is whether you need the Precision Workstation. The only potential advantage I can see is if that's the only way to get the RAID 1 (the two hard drives that back each other up) option. Generally the Precision Workstation is for graphics intensive applications such as high-end photo editing or CAD. If you really do plan to use it as a server you may be better off buying an entry-level server. However, I'm not sure if you can buy a server with XP or Vista on it, and server software is around $500.
 
You could easily get by with a new entry level PC nowadays for IF Visualization and POS, but having that extra speed and power at the design counter is worth it if you can afford it.

As far as the video card is concerned, if there's a choice see if you can get one with both VGA and DVI connections on the back - if you ever decide to add another monitor to that system you'll be ready to go.

I totally agree with David on the HD - if the price jump isn't much then go with the bigger option. IF project files store all the captured images from the camera, so they can be easily megabytes in size and after a couple years that'll really start to add up.

The DVD burner is probably overkill as you could easily get by with a CD burner... most stuff nowadays can still be backed fully up on a CDR. Worst case you can always spend $20 on a 2 gig flash drive.

For the camera, Mike just posted a good link on this forum for a Canon S2. That's a really great camera for that price (Wizard bought all our S2 when they first came out unfortunately so its been kinda hard to unload them at original retail).

Oh, and yeah, stick with XP for now. It probably won't be till close till this summer when most of your business software will be fully Vista compatible (not only are the Canon camera drivers not there yet, but even many of Microsoft's database tools and programs aren't yet either).
 
WizSteve said:
Oh, and yeah, stick with XP for now.
Click to expand...

And you better hurry on that. I don't know about other companies, but at Dell you can only get XP with the higher end XPS systems and the Precision Workstations.
 
David N Waldmann said:
And you better hurry on that. I don't know about other companies, but at Dell you can only get XP with the higher end XPS systems and the Precision Workstations.
Click to expand...
You are right. I just bought a Precision workstation and the Canon camera which Mike suggested a few days ago while it was still on sale. Just ordered a ceiling mount kit, cables, etc. Whew...that's done....now to wait for it all to arrive and the then the big set up with IF. Crossing my fingers that it will all work smoothly. Setting up the network in a "raid" (?) configuration will be my challenge. I have touched nothing but a Mac--ever! I'm counting on my staff. I think the higher end computer is probably a good idea given that it will have to store IF files, run Mat Designer at the design counter, a browser, and later Retail Management software.

Kirstie
The Framer's Workshop, Berkeley
 
Paul N said:
Interesting! What does that tell us about Vista then?
Click to expand...

Nothing really. It's happened with every major OS "upgrade" that I'm familiar with.

Large corporations don't want to be forced into anything new, so if places like Dell are going to be able to keep selling to them until they make the switch they have to offer the older OS.

PS: I should say that they also offer XP on their OptiPlex systems - their workhorse line suggested as everyday user machines in corporate environments.
 
This is the response I got from Canon when I asked them about Vista compatibiloity with their camera SDK:

----------
Dear Mr. Kerr:

1. Canon's current digital camera SDKs are not fully compatible with Windows Vista.
2. We expect a Vista-compatible version later this year, but no posting schedule has been announced.
3. SDK documentation is typically released when the SDKs are released.

As always, registered developers will be notified whenever new SDKs are available.

Thank you for developing software for Canon Digital Cameras!

Best Regards,

Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Digital Camera Developer Relations Program
 
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