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Work Computer upgrade.

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  • Computers
  • Adobe Reader
  • Business Computing
Last response: in Business Computing
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February 4, 2014 10:27:43 AM

I recently took a maintenance job for the print room on my campus. Immediately my boss complains that the computer is too slow for the workload he receives every semester. Well, the school focuses on architecture so there's a lot of 25x36, or larger, architect drawings.

I asked around the office and checked up specs using dxdiag.

Keep in mind that mainly Adobe Reader or Adobe Illustrator is used for printing.

Specs:
Dell Precision 390.

Intel 2 duo (2.40GHz, 2 CPU)
4 GB Ram
Nvidia Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI

Obviously this a pretty low end machine. At most I think smoothly printing 3 pdf files is sufficient and practical.

any info is appreciated.

More about : work computer upgrade

February 4, 2014 10:41:37 AM

My parents own a digital sign production and printing business, and I've done all of their computer work and networking for about a decade now. Digital design work, especially digital printing, can require quite a bit of computing resources, but a lot of it is based on the type of design files and software you are working with. The higher resolution, larger the size, the more it is going to take to render and output to your printer. However, often times a good RIP software cane make the output much more efficient requiring less resources.

So first things first, is this a design computer or a RIP computer? In other words is this system's primary purpose for the actual creation of designs, or is it primarily used for outputting those designs to printed media such as through a wide format printer? This will make a bit of difference in how your hardware is most efficiently utilized and the type of configuration you may need. Also, do you have some sort of separate network storage for files? A server or NAS is most common for storing shared folders and files for access through multiple computers for people to work on, but often times I see people take a design or a RIP computer and also use it as a file server, which is really not the best idea.

What versions of what software will you be utilizing? You said mainly Adobe Reader and Illustrator, but which versions specifically? The newer versions of software require more hardware capabilities to run ideally, but they can also leverage more resources better when available.
February 7, 2014 5:52:59 AM

The computers simply output the designs. The office is located in an architecture school. So large resolution building designs are what's being printed for long hours. Currently the department uses Adobe Reader X. At your mention of RIP software, I'll look for a AR 5 over the weekend and see if it helps, would the OS downgrade from win7 to xp sp3 help speed up the process or would the xp only slow down the computer overall?
February 7, 2014 6:57:52 AM

I would not recommend running Windows XP. It isn't able to utilize the system resources as efficiently as Windows 7/8, is much more vulnerable and less stable, and also is ending support very soon. Stick with Windows 7 at least. Are all of your production files then just sent out from Adobe Reader from original PDF files? Most of the stuff that we output is done through a RIP software specifically designed for printing to large format printers, but much of this is also because there are very fine details that have to be controlled such as ink levels and color fidelity, the speed at which ink is placed on certain substrates or media, etc. Doing architectural prints I don't think requires this much fine control so having a specialized RIP printing software may not be necessary. That doesn't mean it takes any less computing resources, though, to process and output those high resolution graphics.
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