mindgraffiti

If I can solve the fish problem, why can’t I seem to find a proper solution to this one?

The Photo Department

The Photo department has reached critical mass. After 10 years and 12 TB (yes, I do mean 12 terabytes) of photos, their Mac G5 finder windows will no longer search for photos with ease. Complaints of “spinny beach balls” and a noticeable lag in productivity this past busy season earned them an iMac loaded with Leopard with the idea of dedicating a single machine only to search. The trouble? The poor iMac can’t search photos as fast as their G5s on a bad day. While I predict a small boost in their productivity because their own machines are freed from search queries, it does not solve the problem. They need a long term solution.

Band aids on broken legs

The best possible solution would be a dedicated server with a custom database and a nice interface to spit out the results. Throw in intranet/internet capability and a shopping cart for good measure. Unfortunately, I suspect the budget is not available to address an enterprise-level problem with an enterprise-level solution.

Size that budget down some and I would suggest a contract to develop a Flickr clone built for commercial use. Keep all the perks of Flickr with a shopping cart added. Once the programmers were finished building it, they could sell it to other companies as a white label product where others could install it on their own local intranet or on their own servers. I understand the typical online business model is to sell the service and not the product but many companies would rather own the product than risk becoming dependent on a company that they perceive “could disappear into the night.”

I am resisting the urge to peg them as thinking in the traditional business model types who were burned when the tech bubble burst because it also makes sense from a convenience standpoint. If we simply bought the services we needed instead of buying the product to do the service, we would end up with Flickr to handle photos, Wufoo to build the Contact Us forms, Paypal’s shopping cart to sell our products and Issu to serve our magazine online. These separate services cobbled together would work great for a small business, just not the medium or large ones.

Cut the budget even more, and I would like to see a Mac Pro with 2 Quad Cores, serious RAM and Adobe Lightroom running. The same solution already in place, where a machine is dedicated to searches only, but bulked up beyond the iMac’s abilities.

The last on the list would be a revised work flow and Adobe Lightroom installed on the iMac. Even then, I doubt Lightroom will function. The minimum system requirements are lies. Adobe recommends running Lighroom with 1 GB of RAM, but the forums and my own testing suggest it takes a minimum of 2 GB for it to function on its most basic level without crashing.

I presented my solutions two weeks ago. During our weekly staff meeting it was announced that the Photo Department will be receiving a new Mac Pro with Lightroom to help ease their growing pains. I was unimpressed, since The Higher Ups only approved the minimal budget.

At 2.8 GHz/8 GB RAM on two sets of quad core processors, it’s the minimum specs I recommended just to run Lightroom. The downside is obvious. I predict they will out grow the memory on that computer quickly. The upside is the Mac Pro is configured to grow with them, so they can expand it in the future.

I learned a new lesson on office politics. If you really want to see them on a screaming machine, claim it as the minimum specs. Then declare that no less than a custom-programmed solution costing three times your minimum solution would truly solve the problem. After that, they won’t flinch at the original specs you set up. Too bad I learned it too late.

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