CE3000CRP and Mac

Hi !
I was browsing your board for the last couple days looking for the best solution for my needs.
My wife is in the market for a cutter/plotter and I act as her personal shopper
It started with looking at these scrapbooking desktop models like Cricut which I don't feels comfy with (limited functions, expensive modules, etc.).
I was looking into a solution that can be connected to a computer and finally ended up looking in detail to the CE3000CRP aka Craft Robo Pro 2.
It seems to be the best solution in functionality, size and quality.

Now, having a Mac household seems to limit the possibilities in using this machine. I saw that Graphtec has a Illustrator plug-in (have CS2) but I'm unsure if this will work on a Intel-Mac (iMac 24").
I also read about the Cutting Master software (is this the same ?) and the website states to contact Graphtec to get the version for Intel-Macs.

Will Cutting Master work with the CE3000CRP ?

And if everything works out, the final question... where to buy ? I found one dealer here on the board but the business seems to be bankrupt

Thanks in advance for your help !

Best regards,
Volker

 

Thanks for the welcome !
I considered (for < 1 sec) to go XP with boot camp or parallels but we all know what happend to Anarkin when he was tempted by the darkside
Been there, done that
So, no, not an option.

As for the use: wife is an artist dealing mostly with mixed media and is annoyed by the time she spends on cutting her material out of paper, cardstock and vinyl as well. Lots of times several identical pieces.
So the solution should be multi purpose and will certainly extend in T-Shirt and screen printing but in low numbers and not primary.

Primary application is Photoshop, as I said Illustrator is available as well.

Guess my question is really if the Illustrator plug-in is enough to let the cutter do its job or do I need to buy additional software ?

 

And one additional question:
Does the plug-in allow for contour cutting from Illustrator ?
The manuals I found so far only demonstrate the setting of the registration markers but have no example of contour cutting.

 

Thanks for the info TresL !
Now I'm offically confused (being Newbie and all)
Please help me out here.
For some reason I had assumed it would work like this:
In Illustrator I have my graphic, lets say a curved form like a snake. Around the form I have my reg markers in a rectangular shape. I had assumed that I could outline the form of the snake in Illustrator as well and let the cutter follow that form. Does this work ?

 

Awesome, sounds easy enough, thanks !

 

What actually is the difference between the CE3000-40 and the Craft Robo Pro 2 ?