Might as well get one of the Adobe suites since you need InDesign and Acrobat Professional. Illustrator might be nice to have too. If you have tech writing classes, Macromedia Captivate is great for creating screenshot tutorials (PC only, I think).

Meanwhile, I don't know that I'd buy into the whole Mac is better than PC debate. Those days of Mac superiority are probably over. I understand that Mac video editing software can be better, but for other graphical design work, the software is the same; the OS is the platform. Factor in all kinds of other concerns in making your decision: cost of hardware, cost of software for the platform, which machine supports the platform, maintenance and administration (someone has to take care of the machines), what software is available through your institution if students want to buy it for personal use, etc. And after having taught in a Mac lab for the last two years, I will tell you it adds some overhead to the class. Students spend extra time trying to accomplish basic tasks as they learn the OS (as do I).

Besides, if you get a PC lab, you put on lots of software they can run at home for free, too: OpenOffice, Nvu, GIMP, etc. ;)

Hi Matt,

If this Media Lab is intended for graphic design students who will likely be practicing in industry, then go with Adobe/Macromedia products. As an industry veteran I will tell you that those are the standards and your students will be required to have competence in them (and have a portfolio demonstrating as such).

Mac vs. PC: Both Macs and PCs have support for Adobe/Macromedia. I prefer the Mac platform and your students will likely work on Macs if find employment in the design industry. (As much as gear heads will tell you Macs and PCs are the same, any graphic design professional will argue to the contrary. There are subtle operating system differences that make Macs the better choice for graphics. Plus, being fluent in both platforms is an added bonus when entering the job market.) Also, Apple is now supporting duel booting of Windows on Macintosh systems. So if you want the best of both world, you can partition your Macs to run Windows so other courses/software can be accomodated in your lab.

However, this is not the ideal time to be setting up a lab for either platform. I'll tell you why and then I'll tell you what I'd suggest. First, as far as Macs are concerned, Apple has recently rolled out its Intel machines. However, Adobe is currently claiming that its suite of products will not be Universal Binary until as late as mid 2007. This can be problematic because the machines will use Rosetta to translate the old Adobe code resulting in slower than expected performance. What this also means is that if you want to get taht performance in the future, you will need to purchase Adobe CS3 when it is released (next spring or summer).

Similarly, Microsoft is scheduled to release Vista in the beginning of 2007. So you will likely need to upgrade any PCs.

The upshot of all of this is that no matter what you do today, you will likely need to spend a chunk of change upgrading a year from now. Here's what I would do If I were you:

Definitely go with the iMacs. Those are **perfect** computers for a school lab for a number of reasons. The Intel models are fast and should work well enough for the 9 months or so using Rosetta until CS3 is released. My campus computer store has some steep discounts on Adobe products for Mac because of the Universal Binary dilemma, so talk to the folks at your store and get them to cut you a solid deal. For all the other software, check out http://www.opensourcemac.org for the best of open source for OS X.

You may want to buy one iMac now. Load it with CS2 and Dreamweaver and run some tests before you commit to that setup for the entire lab.

Good luck!

ok, having run a lab for years, the main thing is... ongoing funding. If you want to have licensed software, you have pay quite a bit for it, each year or every two - three years. This has to be an ongoing fund. This is why many media labs run either on the apple lease program, which is great and can be set for either 3 or 5 years, usually 3, with open source software, which gives you an even longer period of maintainability. but the real issue isn't the startup funds, it is the ongoing costs and finding a way of covering those. If you have the money, that's fine. If you don't then you need to plan ahead. The basic budget on annual year should be about 2/3 of the initial investment, for staff, training, repairs, upgrades, etc.

I'll second the need for continuing funding. Macromedia has a tendency to issue new releases very quickly and you're on the hook for upgrades or else you'll risk getting so far behind that you'll have to purchase new versions instead of the upgrade, which gets even more expensive.

Also, think about how many licenses you'll really need. For example, if you have two classrooms, you might need say only 30 licenses instead of 50. The license will most likely run off a key server and you can roll the dice that at no one time will there be two classes using the same program and thus can get away with fewer licenses. This seems to be fairly standard practice.

Now that Adobe has purchased Macromedia when you buy the Adobe Creative Suite you get the suite of Adobe products & Macromedia products. If you are getting 20-25 liscences you'll qualify for a volume discount. I'd also reccommend buying Final Cut Pro/Express if you plan on doing any video editing

I'd reccommend a G5 tower if you have the money instead of iMacs. Adobe products can take advantage of the dual core processing and make rendering much faster. I wouldn't buy Apple monitors though, they are overpriced for what you need in a lab - although I'd at least have 17in monitors and possibly 19in. In design labs it helps alot with layout and getting to see everything on one screen.

I'd also invest in some peripherials - especially a high end scanner - possibly bigger than you typical 8.5x11. Epson makes some good large format ones.

iMacs now come with Intel core duo as does the faster version of the Mac minis.

I'd also budget for some external hard drives. They can be very useful for backing up student projects, etc. Having them will also help students transfer big files from their laptops, etc. to the machines in the lab and back.