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Computer Hardware & Software

You can never be too young, have too much money, or have too new or fast a computer. Working with digital images on a computer will go much quicker if your computer hs plenty of horsepower. This can be broken down into a few categories:

System Software
If you've been using the same system software for the last few years, congratulations ­ you've gotten your money's worth. Now it's time to move on. Both Windows XP and Apple OSX are smart, fast, powerful and stable. Add to that the fact tat they're very "digital camera friendly," and you've got all the reasons you need to upgrade. By "digital camera friendly," I mean that they've been built knowing that LOTS of people out there are going to be using their computers with digital cameras and images. Both of these system releases will recognize most makes and models of cameras and media cards, and offer to help you download the images (more on this in Section 5, Downloading). Also, the older system software you use, the less likely it will be compatible with today's latest and greatest software.

RAM
Random Access Memory is the fast memory, and along with other memory has gotten fairly inexpensive. A good rule of thumb is that 512MB is the minimum you need for working with photos, and if you do a lot of digital imaging, then you should have at least 1GB. Your editing software uses RAM to be able to make operations happen quickly, and if it runs out of RAM, uses the hard drive, which will make your operations go very SLOWLY.

Processor Speed
It used to be that having an 800MHZ processor was fast. Now that's slow. Welcome to progress. A faster processor will mean thing happening faster on the computer, and you'll spend less time waiting. Buy the fastest you can afford.

Hard Drive
I guarantee that you'll only see image files get bigger in the future. You certainly don't want to keep all of your images on your hard drive, nor should you. However, you definitely want to have a large enough hard drive to keep everything you need fast access to. 120GB drives can be had for under $100. If you're not squeamish about opening your computer, you can usually install a second hard drive in about 30-minutes. The other option is to buy a large external USB 2 or FireWire drive, which don't cost that much more than internal units. With Windows XP or Mac OSX, these drives are almost always plug-and-play.

System Software | RAM | Processor Speed | Hard Drive | Contact Us