I have built a good few windows PC's (including 64 bit OS with 16Gb of RAM) and also own a (very) high end laptop running Vista with 4 Gb of RAM.
I run Lightroom (V1 & v2) and CS3 on the above and in general I am very unhappy with the performance, especially if you compare it against my iMac below.
I bought the 24" iMac last year, primarily for my photography work as graphic designer friends were telling me how much better they worked with Photoshop et al. I have to agree, there is just no comparison and I personally think it's down to Windows not handling the software as well, whatever the hardware you use.
OK the Mac's are more expensive, but no way do you get the same performance even if you spend the same money on PC's and Windows (I have tried for clients).
If you don't beleive me then try the following: open 100 x 1 Mb jpegs in Photoshop on your PC (if it will let you) and batch process them - say do a 50% crop. Your PC will likely crash - if it doesn't then open 200 images and repeat. The Mac will do this with ease.
OK not a real world example, but I'm trying to show how much better a Mac handles the processing of images. I actually don't know what the maximum number is before the Mac will throw up its hands - but I have batch processsed over 600 images.
I will not buy another PC, but instead buy Mac's and run windows on them if I need to.
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