You know the old saw about people using only 10% of their brainpower? It’s total rubbish say leading scientists. There is a similar statement about people using software, though, that really is true. Whether it’s Adobe Photoshop or InDesign, or Microsoft Word or Excel, people really do use only about 10% of the available tools. Think about it: Why else are there “light” versions like Photoshop Elements? There are two answers, actually: (1) Because people don’t need all the power offered by the full-boat programs and (2) people don’t know how to use most of the tools anyway.

Tailored training on the job

We’ve blogged a few times over the past year on employee training, but never mentioned one of the most important decisions to make concerning it: Who needs to know what, and why? Even when you decide to train, say, six of your computer artists on some iMac rentals – which will save thousands on the cost of those name-brand two-day seminars – you need a very specific curriculum for each individual employee/student. The first of several determinants for the participants is this: Do they need to know the entire toolbox, or can they get by with 10%?

Your managers that run departments where computers are used – for print, Web, audio, video, post-production, special effects, whatever – will know what each computer artist needs to contribute and, thus, needs to know. One junior staffer may be tasked with converting still photos from a digital camera’s raw RGB files to CMYK for eventual printing, perhaps after the senior artist uses them in a layout. The junior member of the team does not need full Photoshop training for  this, just a decent introduction to color space and the appropriate menus and tools in the software.

In addition, a senior staffer may have gotten past the 10% threshold but still needs some training in tweaking printing press profiles. A comprehensive and overlapping curriculum can be devised to take each of these artists, and their colleagues of whatever number, where they need to go skill-wise. The veteran artists on staff, along with management, can teach the courses with the help of a touchscreen LCD monitor rentals at the front of the room. The teacher should have an iMac available, too, to take advantage of some great built-in features of Mac’s OS X.

Mac OS X for desktop sharing

It probably is true that most Mac users only use about 10% of OS X’s incredible power. For several years OS X has been making desktop sharing easier, until it now takes just a few moments to set up. Sharing desktops means the teacher can take control of the students’ computer rentals from her own computer, demonstrating procedures in real-life and real-time. With this technology, students can interact with the teacher directly and accelerate the learning process, whether it’s focused on Final Cut Pro (which has its own kind of sharing) or some other potent application.

Summary: Make a chart of the skills that need to be imparted to each employee, see where they overlap and devise the curriculum to be progressive. With a room, some Macs, desktop sharing enabled and a big-screen display in place, you’re on your way to a better trained staff.  Contact an experienced Account Executive (or head to our online Quick Rental Quote form) and let us know what training obstacle we can help you knock down!

Apple has done it again – and again! The Cupertino company just recently announced updates to the Mac Pros, but that was just the start, apparently. It has also retooled its iMacs, introduced some “insanely great” accessories and debuted a new, improved LED Cinema Display. Apple has been criticized in the past for over-hyping some relatively underwhelming product changes, but every one of the recent product introductions has been certifiable Big News.

New and potent iMacs rental

The iMac will have the latest/greatest Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors (CRE rents i7 iMac) and no more shared graphic processing – there’s an ATI card in every model. The new iMacs can be outfitted with the new standalone Magic Trackpad (MT) similar to the new metal-and-glass built-ins on MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, but even the new Mighty Mouse (MM) can interpret the Apple-style finger swipes. The latest iMacs continue the last generation’s 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac sizes, but now both screen sizes are powered by Intel Core i3 or i5 chips, a solid upgrade from last year’s Core 2 Duo processors.

The base 21.5-inch iMac has a 3.06 GHz Core i3 processor, an ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics card, 4 GB of RAM, a capacious 500GB hard drive and an SD card slot that’s SDXC-compatible. The upscale 21.5-inch iMac begins with a 3.2 GHz Core i3 but has an upgrade path to a 3.6 GHz Core i5 unit – plenty of oomph for running Final Cut Pro with CRE’s Aja Io HD rentals. The 27-inch model’s base unit has the same 3.2 GHz Core i3 paired with an ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics card, and has an optional 3.6 GHz Core i5.

The 27-inch line-topping iMac has a 2.8 GHz Core i5 with an ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics card, with an upgrade path to a 2.93 GHz Core i7 chip and even an optional 256GB Solid State Drive (SSD). This is the kind of power and speed that used to require Mac Pro rentals. Prefer a “real world measure” to the technical terms? Put it this way: Many functions are up to two or three times faster on these new iMacs. That’s some upgrade, and it means the work you actually do will get done faster.

Other new Apple gadgets

Along with your iMac, or any time after you buy it, you can get yourself the new Magic Trackpad (MT), a standalone version of the built-in MacBook and MacBook Pro trackpads. The MT is wireless, like the iMac’s keyboard and Mighty Mouse (MM), and allows users to make the same multi-finger, multi-touch gestures, including swipes and zoom-pinches. To support the MT, MM and the wireless keyboard Apple has released a Battery Charger with six rechargeable batteries to cycle in and out of the units that need them.

Apple also introduced its new 27-inch LED Cinema Display, replacing both the 24- and 30-inch models. The new display is, like its predecessor, an LED backlit system that supports the Mini DisplayPort-equipped iMacs, minis, Mac Pros, MacBooks and MacBook Pros. With the same 2,560 x 1,440 resolution as the 27-inch iMacs, the display will be right at home with any Mac user on any platform. It will be available in September, when CRE will add it to our wide-ranging line of LCD monitor rentals and plasma rentals that offer you every type and size of large screen you could possibly need.

You know that CRE has everything you could possibly need as far as anything computer-related, but we also have you covered with entertainment industry rentals and even office equipment rentals. Call or send an e-mail to our experienced Account Executives, or fill out our Quick Rental Quote form, and get what you need to get the job done. We’re here for you, to make sure it all gets done on time, on target and on budget.

Creative professionals weigh in on the age old question…Mac or PC? An unscientific sampling at a designer site indicates that between 70-80% of designers use Macs, compared to the 80% of “regular Internet users” who use  PC’s.

Although most designers acknowledge that the same design tools are available on both platforms, many tout the Mac’s ease of use and superior build quality. One respondent summed it up by saying that “the platform has nothing to do with the outcome of design. But designing on Mac feels a lot more natural to me. I’ve used both PCs and Macs extensively, each has its own advantages. For design, multimedia and other creative work, I personally feel more at home on a Mac.” Although some PC partisans – and, honestly, plenty of good work is done on PCs – brought up some good points about cost differences, it is clear that there remains a solid majority of Mac-using designers.

Some professionals use both-Mac and PC

Within that complement of Mac users, of course, are plenty of people who use both PCs and Macs, just as most companies do these days. It is not uncommon to see a Fortune 500 firm with PCs in the accounting department (although that’s changing slowly) and Macs in the art/marketing department. And with the cross-platform programs and ease of PC-Mac networking, there is no reason that both kinds of computers can’t co-exist peacefully. It’s just that when it comes time for entertainment professionals to edit the movies or master the records or finish the magazines, more of them reach for a Mac Pro rental than a PC, although CRE Rentals does rent both.

Another important development is the power of the Macs. The fastest Mac ever tested by Macworld, by the way, isn’t an eight-core Mac Pro, but the top-of-the-line iMac with the new Core i7 Intel chip. The rest of the iMac family is similarly potent, making CRE’s iMac rentals a sensible alternative to the Mac tower. However, the Mac Pro has the advantage in many areas, like PCIe slots and other expandability options, that make it a continuing favorite for use with Final Cut Studio and other audio-visual software. CRE can equip any kind of Mac, any kind of way you need. Of course, if you need a PC to run PC-only software (certain accounting packages, proprietary builds, etc.), then CRE can outfit you with speedy PC computer rentals, as well.

Which one….Mac or PC?

Comparing Mac and PC computers makes for interesting reading. The bottom line is creative professionals  should use “the best tool for the  job. Nowadays the OSes aren’t different enough to make the decision for you based on features. If you already know one OS, stick with it until you have a very compelling reason to switch.” This is a reasonable position however, some Mac loyalists point out that Macs can run both Windows and the Mac OS. If you need desktop rentals for your post-production work, and want to use both OSes, then you really do have just one choice – a Mac (learn more about which Mac to rent).

CRE’s Account Executives are experts at getting you what you need to push through your bottleneck of backed-up work, take on that new project or bring in new clients. Send an e-mail, make a call or fill out the Quick Rental Quote form, and you’ll be sailing smoothly in no time.

Time was, if your company needed quality music – for a Web site, a presentation, a commercial – you would spend a lot of money on rights to commercial productions, or go to a recording studio and have the engineers put together a “package deal” for you. Paying for musicians, engineers, equipment and studio time adds up fast. A new generation of composition and soundtrack tools now brings the power of pro music to smaller businesses, and CRE has the equipment to help you produce music on any budget, all the way up to G5 with Kona card rentals that can handle any audio job you want to tackle.

For high-quality drum sounds the “old” way, you would have had to set up a drummer and his kit in a room with baffles, sound deflectors, etc. Now you can get digital samples, the actual sounds of real drums, in various sample kits from numerous manufacturers. These and other sounds – orchestra instruments, basses, guitars, all kinds of pianos, organs, synthesizers, and more – are also included in such “studio in a box” programs as Sonic Fire, Adobe Soundbooth, Band-in-a-Box and some members of the Cakewalk family. You can even cobble together music tracks with no outboard equipment whatsoever (or use analog mixing boards like CRE offers among its audio visual equipment rentals).

Adding analog

If you have more to accomplish than a self-contained program can offer, you can take the next step up with entry-level programs like Apple’s Garageband or Cakewalk’s Home Studio, which are based on “loops” that you put together like puzzle pieces. They are competent in the tracking arena, but fall somewhat short in terms of plug-ins and quality of effects (like reverb) that are essential to a project. Still, you can add a USB, Firewire or PCI-based audio interface allowing you to use microphones and electronic instruments to add real sounds to the real-sounding samples in your computer.

The pro level studios use one or more of the major Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software applications – Digidesign’s Pro Tools, Apple’s Logic, Cubase, Digital Performer (Mac only), Sonar (PC only) others – and you can also get “lite” versions like Logic Express, that will get you into the game and will run fine on mid-range PCs and  iMac rentals. Depending on the results you need to get, you can even get hold of a good sound professional and one of the Mac Pro rentals from CRE and still save a bundle over the alternatives.

Decisions, decisions

If you need to get some music tracks in a hurry without recording anything, you should choose “soundtrack” software that doesn’t require anything at all except a computer – no microphones, no interfaces, nothing. If you have more time (and expertise) then you move up one or two notches as described above. The more involved, the better the results, of course. Weigh your needs against your budget and capabilities, and then go for it. CRE can help in any way you need.

When you start a new project that’s a little different, you can count on CRE’s experienced Account Executives to inform you about all the options available. Call or send an e-mail, or fill out the Quick Rental Quote form, and we will get you set up however you need. When it’s time to get the job done and done right, you can count on CRE to support you with the right information, equipment and expertise, so that you can make the “sound” move.

Those of you who read Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, not to mention all the specialty TV-biz newsletters, know that the last six weeks or so have seen a lot of action on the TV pilot front. ABC gave the greenlight to two dramas and a comedy in one day, with Fox, NBC and CBS spreading out their action over a bit more calendar space. Fact is, though, that the pilot season is in full swing, which means companies great and small will be doing title sequences, post-processing, digital effects and other work for the producers of the shows. CRE, of course, specializes in supporting the entertainment industry with the best computers and other high-tech equipment.

It was not that long ago that it took a room full of computing power to produce a single four-minute cartoon. Now there are independent films being created on single Macintoshes. Even the 17-inch iMac, for example, has a Core 2 Duo processor and a gigabyte of RAM, an unthinkably powerful combination that would have seemed otherworldly in the 2001 TV season (remember The Lone Gunmen?). It is muscular enough for audio/video chores and provides a potent platform for Adobe’s Creative Suite, too.

Technology rentals for the  entertainment industry

Running hither and yon to meetings, day and night? If you take along one of the CRE laptop rentals, like the HP NX9010 with a 3GHz Pentium, you will power your way through them all. You will be in constant contact with its WiFi, and the 1GB of RAM will keep you multitasking with notes, video clips, audio addenda and everything else that is likely to come up. Staying put at your desk? Offload your extra work to your assistant or pilot-season temp, outfitted with an HP/Compaq D510, a desktop rentals star with a 2.4GHz Pentium 4. This rental package comes with a 17-inch LCD monitor, too.

CRE covers you no matter what your production needs. From 30″ Apple Cinema Display rental for a big-screen work window, to powerful video and post solutions like the PowerMac G5 with Kona card rentals, we have it all. No matter what you have to do, we have the equipment to help you get it done, and everything arrives to you tested, double-checked and ready to rock, every time. Even more, we can provide the office equipment rentals to tie everything together – whether it’s an HP 4000N B&W laser printer or an all-in-one printer/fax/scanner. CRE has got you covered.

Need some help configuring a system or figuring out a solution for your pilot season workload? Our Account Executives know what you need and have been helping entertainment industry professionals of all kinds for a long, long time. We know what you’re up against, and we know how to help. Contact us today, or fill out a Quick Rental Quote form if you already know what you need, and we will get on the job for you, right now. We do our best to help you do your best, which is the kind of win-win formula we like.

The rumors met reality on January 27th as Apple unveiled its iPad tablet. As opposed to the iPhone launch, however, this one was not met with 100% support from the Apple/Mac fan community. In fact, some folks were downright displeased, predicting failure with a capital “F.” Of course, only time will tell, but right now we know all the specs and can at least tell you the pluses and minuses of the device.

Ups and downs

The first thing you need to know is that the iPad is not a small MacBook in tablet form. It’s a big iPhone, except that the only kind of calling you can do is VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) with WiFi and a tool like Skype. Lacking a webcam, of course, means voice only, no cool video chats. The unit will run all the iPhone Apps, although it will have its own Apple store.

It’s not a Kindle-killer, either. Amazon’s one-trick pony is perfect for the one trick it does – let you read, even in direct sunlight, with its e-ink technology. When Amazon did its research, it discovered that having color, WiFi, a browser and lots of other doohickeys interrupted people’s concentration on reading. Plus, the iPad has perhaps 8-10 hours of battery time, whereas the Kindle and the Sony e-book readers go 150-200 hours on a charge.

The specs

The specifications are at least as interesting for what is missing as what is there. Powered by a special, Apple-designed, 1GHz A4 chip built by PA Semiconductor, the iPad comes with 16, 32 or 64GB of solid state flash storage, but there is no separate graphics chip, so no multitasking – you can do one thing at a time. The color screen is 9.7 inches, but it won’t display most of the video on the Web (except YouTube) because there is no Flash support. With all the Flash on the Internet, this is a total head-scratcher. Neither is there a USB port, just the single Dock Connector, which accommodate special (and, ahem, separately priced) adapters for a USB connection or an SD card reader.

What it does have is: WiFi in the latest 802.11b/g/n variety; Bluetooth, so you can use a wireless keyboard, at least if you’re at a table, instead of the on-screen iPhone-y keyboard; and a 3G version coming out a month after the base model. There’s also a microphone, speaker, headphone jack, digital compass, a few sensors (light, accelerometer, proximity) and A-GPS, “Assisted GPS.”

Bottom line

Just a tad smaller than a regular magazine and weighing 1.5 pounds, the iPad is hardly a shirtpocket take-along. It needs a case so you won’t scratch it, and a data plan with AT&T so you can use the WiFi or 3G. What remains to be seen is, Who will buy this thing? Apple fans with iPhones already shell out to AT&T, so it’s hard to believe they’ll double their monthly bill for a larger iPhone with little added functionality. MacBook Pro rentals at CRE won’t be threatened, since the iPad doesn’t run any Mac software. People who are PC-centric and don’t like Apple in the first place are hardly going to rush out to buy this device, either.

The iPad appears to a number of observers to be the first pure entertainment play from Apple since the iPod. It is not a productivity enhancer, not easy to use as a phone or book reader, has a closed platform that may hinder third-party development and costs from $500 to over $800 in a somewhat bizarre pricing structure. It just may be that Apple has made an expensive toy for jetsetters and tech collectors, but if you see the “Steve Jobs magic” at work again, post a comment and let us know!

In the meantime, for true Apple productivity, CRE has the Mac Pro rentals and laptops, along with convention technology and everything else you need from Apple, H-P and other companies. From office equipment to Audience Response System rentals, our Account Executives have the expertise and the equipment to help you get the job done. Call, send an e-mail or fill out the Quick Rental Quote form and we’ll get right on it for you.

Several times this year, most recently at the end of October, Apple upgraded and updated its Macintosh product lines. It still has its top of line Mac Pro towers, last “refreshed” in Q1 2009, but now has faster iMacs with larger screens and a potent Mac mini. (Not that it will replace the Xserve line that CRE rents, but the mini can now be purchased with Mac OS X Server installed.) The new Mac laptops are pretty exciting, too; read the MacBook Pro laptops review.

Go with a Mac Pro

When the Mac Pro high-performance desktops like CRE rents get their next refreshing in early 2010, they may get Intel Xeon six-core processors, according to a recent unconfirmed rumor on the Web site, Hardmac. Reports from “an inside source at Apple” indicate that the firm wants the dual-socket, six-core “Gulftown” chip in its next Mac Pro.

The Core i9 chip will increase performance while decreasing power usage, or so the story goes. The Mac Pro might also have a modified motherboard with a 10 Gbit/second Ethernet port (a major increase) and support for 8 and 16 GB RAM modules (current maximum is 4GB). This allows a potential total of 128 GB of RAM.

A new iMac for you?

The iMac line has had two screen sizes in its modern (flat panel) version, now measuring 21.5 and 27 inches, but has new LED backlit displays with 16:9 widescreen ratio. A 21.5-inch imac rental has a high-resolution 1920 x 1080 pixel display. Movie lovers should note that the 27-inch model’s Mini DisplayPort supports bi-directional connections – just connect an HD source and your iMac is an HD monitor.

The iMacs now have 4 SO-DIMM slots supporting up to 16 GB of RAM, and four different Intel processors. The 21.5-inch models can be configured with 3.06 GHz or 3.33 GHz Intel Core2 Duo processors, but the “serious fun” starts with the 27-inch iMac. It is configurable with the aforementioned CPUs, a 2.66 Quad-Core i5 or a 2.8 GHZ Quad-Core i7 processor. The two Quad-Core options take the iMac to the level of performance first seen in the Mac Pro – very impressive!

Mini goes maxi

The Mac mini has two new configurations: one model featuring a 2.26 GHz Intel Core2 Duo, a 160 GB hard drive and 2 GB of RAM; the second has a 2.56 GHz Intel Core2 Duo processor and double the hard disk and RAM (320 and 4 GB, respectively). Both feature seriously upgraded graphics capabilities via an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chipset. These minis are becoming very popular as “small-but-mighty” servers especially for small businesses or for off-site, temporary offices at a convention center.

Call one of our Account Executives today and find out how a Mac Pro rental  or iMac rentals can help increase productivity or solve those backlog problems. Give us a call or send an e-mail, or simply fill out a Quick Rental Quote form. We are Mac rental specialists and are here to help.

The newly upgraded, 13-inch 2.26 GHz MacBook Pro (MBP) has amassed a number of rave reviews from the experts, including an Editors’ Choice award from CNET – as well as from PCMag.com, Laptop Magazine and ComputerShopper. Reviewers credit the many internal changes, and several important cosmetic ones, for making the entry-level MBP an excellent value for new Mac users.

The base model MacBook Pro retains the classy, aluminum unibody and the slick multi-touch trackpad of its predecessor. The positive additions include a SecureDigital memory card slot, full-size backlit keyboard, a FireWire 800 port, a color-enriched display and a permanent (non-removable) battery good for up to seven hours on a charge. These macintosh laptops are faster, have more ports and offer a longer-lasting battery!

Mid-range and top of line MacBook Pros

One rung up the MBP ladder is the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 2.53 GHz processor, above which there are 15- and 17-inch models available with CPUs up to 3.06GHz. All MBP models have a 1066 MHz frontside bus, 3MB of shared L2 cache (as much as 6MB for the 15- and 17-inchers) and run applications faster than ever. When you choose to rent a MacBook Pro or  iMac rental, you can be assured that you’re getting the state-of-the-art in desktops and notebooks.

The basic graphics subsystem is a power-saving NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, offering integrated graphics processing for solid, everyday performance with long battery life – the best choice for an MBP to rent for “cruising” conventions and conferences. The 17-inch MBP and certain 15-inch models have the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics board, offering powerful performance for graphically demanding work.

Powerful, colorful (and green)

The MacBook Pro’s glossy LED-backlit widescreen display has 60 percent greater color gamut than previously, for richer and brighter colors. Everything you see – including the display itself – is spectacularly clear, with performance that is solid. With its seamless glass enclosure, this display is strong, durable, power efficient, mercury- and arsenic-free – and greener than ever.

Every MacBook Pro has a large hard drive, up to 500 GB, or you can opt for a 128 or 256 GB solid-state drive (SSD). The MacBook Pro also supports up to 8 GB of high-speed RAM, has the iSight webcam and a microphone built in, and ups the wireless ante to 802.11n for even faster communications. There are two USB 2.0 ports (three on the 17-inch model), a FireWire 800 port for speedy peripherals and a Mini DisplayPort that can easily power the new Apple LED Cinema Display.

Apple didn’t forget the entry-level MacBook laptop, either, giving it a unibody of its own (plastic, not aluminum), a new battery technology and a few other tweaks. Try MacBook rentals for an upcoming corporate event.

Curious about the new Macs and what they can do for your company? Talk to one of CRE’s expert Account Executives today – send an e-mail, make a call, fill out a Quick Rental Quote form – and find out everything you need to know about the new Mac laptops. You can also read our round-up of the latest Mac desktop computers, as well as an overview of other new Apple technology.

With the pace of technological change seeming to accelerate all the time, how can SMBs (Small and Medium-sized Businesses) hope to stay current? It’s not just a matter of getting the latest equipment. You also have to keep your employees updated, trained and equipped. It’s not easy, but online education of various kinds may help you.

There are companies that run well-structured, highly organized online schools, and you might want to look into these. However, there are also many low- and no-cost ways to keep your employees up to date. If you work in digital media, with audio and video applications like Final Cut or Vegas—on powerful quad- and eight-core desktop computers like the Mac Pro or an H-P XW 8400 workstation—then you already know how much time it takes to stay current.

For your other employees, perhaps working with continuously upgraded software like office applications and operating systems, you can save money by locating some free tutorials online. Get a Macintosh and/or PC desktop like CRE rents, set it up in a spare office or corner of the break room, and establish a training schedule. This way none of your regular workflow is interrupted and you can upgrade skills without downgrading your firm’s productivity.

Use it or lose it?

Remember, too, that the software packages you’ve invested in usually come with tutorials, online help files, sample documents and other training aids. It may be that you are well covered for software training without knowing it. In that case, extend your horizons a bit and you will discover that there is as much, or more, business and marketing training available to help you grow and expand your company.

It should go without saying that most companies need a strong, compelling and (hopefully) original Web presence or “online strategy” in this day and age. Check out these excellent online webinars and seminars featuring search engine marketing topics that will help your organization “conquer” search.

Low-cost training/research station

One of the lesser-advertised benefits of a computer rental is training and research. In SMBs, most computers (like their users) are dedicated to certain daily tasks that are interrupted at your peril. Renting a wifi-enabled tablet PC, laptop, or desktop from CRE will keep your own assets invested in ongoing work, and allow you to keep skills updated as you rotate your computer users through a new training workstation—outfitted with free lesson plans that you’ve just learned about.

Fill out our Quick Rental Quote form now and our expert Account Executives will help you set up whatever you need to keep you on the cutting edge. Let the training begin!

Forget the press releases. Forget the keynote addresses. Forget the rumor mills. If you want to know what Apple’s plans are for supporting its Macintosh computers, read the “system requirements” on their new software releases.

Within the last few months, Apple has released new versions of Final Cut, Logic Studio and its operating system, Mac OS X. All of them tell part of the story about Apple’s plans. Lets see what Apple’s OS software changes tell us about the company’s hardware strategy.

Goodbye, PowerPC

Rather than making a broad announcement, Apple has quietly noted in the system requirements that its flagship audiovisual applications, Final Cut Pro and Logic Studio, need an Intel processor running OS X 10.5.

Requirements for 10.5, now one “rev” (revision) behind state-of-the-art Snow Leopard 10.6, are increasingly common in today’s third-party Mac software releases. The need for the Intel CPUs that came to the Mac just a couple of years ago is not yet universal. However, the high-end functions for film and music, the types of work that creative pros do on a PowerMac G5 with Kona card rental, now depend on the hardware capabilities of Intel chips.

The way forward

Not every company replaces or upgrades equipment at the same rate. In addition, A/V pros, like those using AJA Io HD rentals, are known to hang on to hardware/software combinations that work “just right” for them, even when (as in the case of Mac’s OS 9) that combo workstation is out of date.

The battle to save working OS 9 workstations is pretty much over, but battle lines are now forming to keep PowerPC Macs (G3, G4 and G5 chips) in the creative arsenal. For a company like CRE, with clients in all industries using all types of hardware and software, it is important to “meet them where they’re at” with the right tools. CRE stocks PowerPC Macs (primarily G5’s, with some G4 laptops) as well as the latest Intel machines.

Whatever kind of project you need extra help with, from graphic-intense creative assignments and video post-processing to PowerPoint presentations and Flash animations, CRE can match your PC and/or Mac configurations to get you the right tools to finish the job. Fill out the Quick Rental Quote form now and expect a swift, problem-solving reply from our experienced Sales team.