2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and Photoshop CS2

If you decided to move her into a Mac, it seems to make sense to get the Mac version of CS2. Right now, CS2 has to be translated by Rosetta and while I do not think it is bad at all, some people do.

I have the first gen BlackBook and 2GB of RAM and it seems to work well enough for me. Perhaps download the demos and see if they meet your expectations.

I have a 1st-generation MB with 1.25GB memory and have XP installed on it with Bootcamp. I use photoshop on both XP and OSX. The speed of PS CS2 in OSX seems just OK to me. By "speed" here I mean the response of the program upon the click of your mouse, because I only use PS for the photos i shoot which does not take much of computation power at all. Because PS CS2 for OSX is running thru Rosetta, the reponse is not as quick as the pc version. I can immediately notice the difference once i switch over to the PC side. For the same reason, the cpu temp cranks up really fast, too. Therefore I hear my CPU fan kick in a lot while using PS CS2 in OSX. Although you have a C2D MB, i don't think it'll make much difference since it's not substantially faster than the CD ones.

Therefore, if you're going to buy a Mac version of PS CS2, i suggest you to hold off a little for the universal version to come out, which is expected next yr, because this is a few hundred dollars we are talking about here. Unless you don't care about that money like i do...:)

Doniel is right--CS2 gobbles up the CPU on my C2D MacBook. The fan kicks in shortly after launching the application, and runs at ridiculously high speeds (6,000-plus rpm, according to the smcFanControl utility). CS2 under Rosetta on this machine runs noisy and hot and slow.

I also find that if I've got Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign all launched, one o of them will invariably crash "in the background" while working in the other.

If I were you, I'd save my money now and wait for CS3.

If I were you, I'd save my money now and wait for CS3.

I agree. Eventually Adobe is going to get the universal versions of their products for the intel-based macs. I would run Windows XP on a mac if you HAD to, i.e, if the program you needed was not available for the mac. I will bet that Photoshop CS2 running in Rosetta on a core 2 duo mac is still better than running a virtualized windows version. We'll see when my macbook arrives.

Tough call. CS3 could be months and months away. Can you wait that long?

For me, CS2 runs surprisingly well on my MacBook (spec in sig)

It runs at the same speed as it did on my Powerbook G4 12" with 1.25gb ram.

I use PS CS (Not CS2) on my 1st generation MacBook with 512MB of ram and it seems to run fine. But i wouldnt want to try and run illustrator and indesign too, atleast until i get 2GB of ram 😀.

If i were you i would wait until CS3, because it isnt exactly a cheap piece of software is it?