I am pretty sure that XP Home does handle a dual core CPU i.e. allow both cores to be used.

I do agree that Vista might be too new to be worth using. Most businesses will stick with XP for the next year or two on the grounds of cost and stability.

After researching the subject on the Internet looking for both positive and negative information I decided to call the Apple centre and discuss my disappointment of the previous day. I tested NX for real after tweeking and adjusting my PC to squeeze all performace from it and my D2X full frame RAW conversion took and amazing 3:15. I normally crop and apply 'faster' noise reduction so things so take as long. Average approx 1:00 for conversion. The same image converted using the Mac Pro took .... less than 10 seconds. The particular model on display only had 1GB memory and only 20M remaining after loading a D2X RAW file so I was running it at its worst.

I type this message using my newly setup (took 10 mins inc getting out of box) Mac Pro with 3GB memory!

Thanks all for your help and assistance.

(no spell checker yet in Safari, no aplogies until I have something setup)

Deliberate, or just ironic? :) Firefox has a spell checker built in, available for Mac OSX from here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/product...osx&lang=en-GB

Hope you are happy with your new machine and it gives you many hours of fun, or not so many hours, depending on your perspective.

Presumably, you have to buy another copy of Nikon NX to run on Mac? Or do Nikon allow you to swap the licence over?

LOL! you know I would come round to FireFox one day! I'll see if Internet Explorer 7.0 works first :D

Sadly, a PC NX product key does not work for a Universal Mac version so I am running the 30 day trial for the moment.

I'll need to transfer Adobe CS to the Mac though.

I did think that you'd be missing your beloved IE when I saw you'd done the deed. You'd better not let other Mac users know that you're running IE in Windows emulation mode on your Mac, you'll have a lynch mob after you. Such acts are treason!

Well, its official I am now a FireFox 2.0 user. I did see if there was IE that would run under OS X but sadly Microsoft stopped developing their greatest work since V5.0. I would use Safari but it does not seen to occupy the whole width of the screen only 50% whereas Firefox seems to 'maximise' at 85% - Strangle.

Spell check is quite good leaving an 'office' style red underline.

Congratulation on new toy.

I still use old IE under mac but every time get that security warnings makes me to think twice to do something serious on it and as you said, Microsoft site refers you to use Safari.

If by screen size occupancy, you mean the size of window in mac, you can adjust that as you need by holding the mouse bottom (Don't ask me which bottom:)) when pointing ONLY to the right lower corner of window and dragging to the size you like, unlike windows that let you use any border for this function (And people think mac is smarter).

Welcome to the New platform syndrome. Patience is strongly advised and helpful for next few weeks:)

How strange! About three years ago I was into web development more serious than I am now and Safari was often used for testing my work. The conclusion I came to was that Safari doesn't adhere to the W3C standards. Some sites I either had to forget about supporting Safari or spend a lot of time getting it to work.

As was mentioned earlier Microsoft ceased developing IE for the Mac, stopping at v5.

I've not yet used Firefox on the Mac so don't have an idea of how well it works but knowing Mozilla it'll be as good as the PC if not better.

Have fun with your new toy Stephen, they're great machines and you'll find it won't crash half as much as the Mac OS has always been solid.

Might want to invest in a two button mouse though ;)

I tried Firefox 2 for a while but didn't like it as much as 1.5 and it has never recommended upgrading, I suspect 2 is really a Beta for mac and unless you want the spell checker, being unable to get rid of tabs bar is just a waste of screenspace. Why anybody should want IE is beyond me.

PS Stephen: you should be able to get windows of all and any application whatever size you want by dragging out bottom RH corner

Just an example of full system (Entery level) offered today by Dell, including Samsug 19" LCD flat monitor for US$ 450 or same with 22" Samsung monitor for $100 more. Its with free shipping (USA). Tax to be added in States where Dell has Dealership such as CA(about 8 percent).


LINK


AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+

Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition

1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs

80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™

16x DVD+/-RW Drive

19 inch Samsung 920NW Widescreen LCD Monitor

NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Integrated Graphics GPU

Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio



And for Vista and larger hard drive, this one is for 50 bucks more:

LINK