Quick mac vs PC question...

My laptop is in dire need of upgrade, and thus having indulged in the world of DSLR, I am looking to get a beefier system with a better monitor.

Ive looked at the possibility of buying an iMAC and a mini desktop tower setup.

The Mac is leading at the moment, but I have a 1TB external drive full of photos from Lightroom and a lot of pictures on there too.

Would I need to reformat this external drive to use it on the Mac or could I just plug and play?

[Kalessin]

It should work just fine if it's FAT32 formatted. Be aware however, that NTFS-formatted drives will be read-only on a Mac, so will need reformatting to something else. HFS+ or FAT32 will do nicely.

[Bri w]

I'm in a similar position, i.e. looking for another laptop just for the photography. I've been looking at the refurb'd ones on PC Worlds website. Decent spec etc, and still with a 12 mth warranty, not a bad price.

The MAC will read the drive format fine.

dont do it.. go PC or Laptop... think of the upgrades.. lol

have you tried Dell?

Believe me, I'm no Apple fanboy! I looked at the Iphone and went for the HTC Desire as I didnt want what everyone else had.

However, looking at the Macs, for internet browsing and photo editing, they just seem to appeal.

I dont want a laptop as I want the S-IPS panel for photo editing. I've seen that Dell offer a few options in that department, but need it to be compact. I dont want to go back to a big tower so the mini ones are as large as I would go.

Believe me, I'm no Apple fanboy! I looked at the Iphone and went for the HTC Desire as I didnt want what everyone else had.

However, looking at the Macs, for internet browsing and photo editing, they just seem to appeal.

I dont want a laptop as I want the S-IPS panel for photo editing. I've seen that Dell offer a few options in that department, but need it to be compact. I dont want to go back to a big tower so the mini ones are as large as I would go.

I have a 21.5" iMac with 1TB HDD. Got it about a month ago (credit card bill in to remind me!). The screen is awesome

No probs reading FAT32 formatted disks/stick-drives/external HDDs whatsoever.

Comes with iLife software pre-installed. This includes iPhoto which is great for cataloguing photos according to data, event, etc and will even catalogue by location if your DSLR stamps its images with GPS data. Just plug your camera into the iMac via USB cable, or stick the SD card into the iMacs slot.

Got mine from Comet for £1150 and it came with a free copy of M$ Office 2008 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Entourage, plus Windows Messenger). Other vendors were selling at this price but didn't have the Office freebie.

I don't regret moving fromPC to iMac one little bit. Boot-up/shut-down times are amazingly quick

Even if the hard drive is formatted in NTFS there are utilities out there who can write as well as read this type of file system on the Mac.

Probably a good idea to get another External HDD and transfer your data onto a native mac partition for a boost in performance as well as backup. 1TB of data loss can make you regret a long time.

And working with photos seem a lot easier on the Mac (and I used to be a PC for 20+ years).