Layout software...Mac or PC?

[caudor]

I have a choice to make. I have both a Mac (OS X 1.3 G4 1 Ghz) and a PC (Athlon XP 2.4 Ghz). Both have 512 meg ram.

I have a little training in Adobe InDesign and would like to use this software for doing the layout of my adventure. I understand the Mac is used by many graphics/designers. Is there a real advantage to doing design work on the Mac? In other words, would InDesign work better on the Mac than the PC, or would it matter?

I have a choice of buying Adobe InDesign CS for the PC or Mac, but I can only afford 1 license. I don't want to start a thread where folks argue over which platform is better, but I would like to know if there are any specific advantages of one over the other for working with this particular software.

Output will be a .pdf file.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[RC Hagy]

Ugh... Licenses. The last I knew there was very little difference (very little difference) between any of the previous incarnatons and the new CS... besides the licenses.

On a practical level see if you can find the previous version of InDesign... it was at 2. My Apple reseller said that Adobe was testing the licensing waters with CS... If they got a real bitter response they might go back to the old structure.

Either way... Which of your computers gives you the better over all performance.

Otherwise, I say go with the Mac.

Oh, yeah... head over to Crucial and budget in more RAM for the future... a full two gig does wonders for everything.


Hagy
Vermont

 

[Aeolius]

Go with whichever platform you are most comfortable with.

Platform wars aside, support for PDF files is built right into Mac OS X: "Based on the cross-platform Portable Document Format (PDF) standard, Quartz 2D displays and prints high-quality, anti-aliased text and graphics and provides industry-leading support for OpenType, PostScript, and TrueType fonts." (from: http://www.apple.com/macosx/architecture/ ). In any application, I can create a PDF in OS X simply from the File/Print menu.

 

[NeuroZombie]

Is this to be printed or created as a pdf? If it is a printed publication, I would go Mac as Mac's have better CMYK color management than all but the best of PC's with specialized software. If it is to be pdf, then it really doesn't matter.

 

[Anti-Sean]

Here's a very in-depth review of InDesign CS by a long time QuarkXPress user.

http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/003/software/indesign/indesign-1.html

It goes over differences between InDesign 2 and CS, as well as feature comparisons between CS and QuarkXPress. I don't use either piece of software, so I'm neutral on the matter, although I'm unable to resist encouraging you to go with the Mac version vs. the PC version for no other reason than the fact that I'm a recent convert (although from Linux, rather than from Windows)

-Sean

 

[caudor]

Thanks to all for the replies! I'll be sure to review the links provided, especially the in-depth review of InDesign CS (thanks very much).

At this point I'm leaning toward using the Mac, especially since I have an open memory slot to add additional memory. I'll try to bump it up to 1 GIG.

I do want to keep my options open for both .pdf and print (although print is uncertain at this point).

I may also buy the Adobe InDesign CS classroom in a book. Thanks again for the tips