is the apple iMac fast enought to use with CS2? i look to switch to Mac, but not sure if the 1.83 ghz with 512mb of ram is fast enough to use. my pc is 3.0 ghz dual core, with 1gig ram. is it better to switch to mac or stay with pc?

Well, a bigger problem is CS2 doesn't run natively on intel macs and won't run in the near future. And obviously 512 is not enogh RAM. But those core duo are pretty fast processors, don't look at the ghz. There are some benchmarks out there that compare their Photoshop performance (on PC obviously and I think I've seen one for Windows installed on a mac) that makes them look pretty good.

Afaik CS2 does run on intelMacs. Not natively, but converted on the fly by Rosetta. And Rosetta does a friggin' fast job of it too.
Also, using Parallels or BootCamp, you can run XP, natively, on intelMacs. Thus you can run the Windows version of CS2, natively, as well.
And... you can run them both at the same time, side by side!
Try that on your PC.

Photoshop in Rosetta is about as fast as on a G4.

I'm really happy about bootcamp (and I've mentioned decent Windows performance on a mac) but to switch to a mac just to work in Windows again in your main application doesn't seem reasonable.

<edit> It would make sense if you were shopping for a notebook though...

US$ 100 says the next PS version for Mac is gonna be UB (native)! Duh
Meanwhile, Rosetta makes CS2 run on intelMacs today. On those zoomin' duo cores!
And you can run CS2 in XP, natively, if you want. Concurrently!
That's enough options for me, right there, right now! Thank you.

Sure... Next summer. For real.

I have the 1.83 iMac with 1GB RAM for around 6 weeks now and use PSCS2 daily. No problems so far - my files are around 70MB TIFFs and PS works fast and stable even when 3 or more files are open at the same time, not to mention other applications. Hope that answeres your question.

Carsten Krieger Photography - www.thecapturedlight.com