Your not ignorant, just incredibly stupid. Your telling me that you have owned a Mac Pro and ONLY used it for emails and the internet? And then you come on here and you feel qualified enough to state as a fact it's crap and is underpowered? Oh hell, yeah, gosh those dual Xeons must REALLY struggle with your web pages mate...
It was sarcastic. The area's listed as "don't", are what the system is being used for above and beyond email and web browsing.
So are you telling is that Adobe runs better on an overclocked PC then an iMac??
Assuming the CPU architecture is the same, then Yes. OC'ed systems will run the same software faster (helps to counter software bloat, which most commercially available software suffers from to some degree).
Apple does not sell hardware or software, they sell a "solution" or an "experience" depending on which marketing guru you listen to. When you buy a MacPro you are not buying the parts, you are buying - in theory at least - a package that is greater than the sum of its parts. By controlling the software and the hardware, things just work.
User Experience.
Generally speaking, this is a major advantage to a closed system. Unfortunately, Apple's fallen behind on this compared to past systems (i.e recent bugs such as the audio bug that went on for so long, keeping it just to the MP).
And they work as a team as efficiently as possible. You could pay to get better bits, but unless you upgrade every single bit - you are probably going to get a bottleneck, so while the specs for some parts are going to look better - the overall experience is still not much better than before - because of that bottleneck.
Assuming the person really knows what the hell they're doing, this isn't an issue. MP's base configurations have bottlenecks for some usages, and have to be solved with upgrades. If a DIY builder is aware of this, they'll add in the necessary components to solve the problem as well, making this a moot argument.
Those that haven't sufficient knowledge/skills, would make the same mistake with either a DIY or purchased system (Apple, Dell, HP,...).
I used to build my own systems. Learned lots. Saved lots of money by upgrading bits and bobs instead of the whole thing. Had lots of down time while I rushed back to the store to exchange the PCI card that conflicted with Video card, or when the ribbon cable didn't quite reach between the HD and MoBo without a nasty twist as it passed over the CD drive connector, so I had to shuffle 3 HDs and a floppy drive into different bays..... ah yes, the good old days.
This is where skill level comes in. Granted, you knew more than some, but the details matter (i.e. get out a string and run it as intended, then measure that length to get various cable lengths correct). Driver interaction issues are harder to deal with, but not impossible.
Apple or any other vendor has to deal with this as well (hardware - driver interactions), and it's discovered in the validation testing. That's one of the major reasons it's done. User's just don't see it, as the vendor put in the testing and made the necessary corrections (presumably, as not all vendors will do this thoroughly, and is becoming more common, including Apple from what I've seen).
And despite the various personal anecdotes, Apple's systems are considered more reliable than the competition. Just ask the various organizations who track these things. It's not just the quality of the parts that make for good experience, it is the time it takes to combine them into the whole package, to test the package, to write the OS to take advantage of what is available.
Would you mind posting the sources of this information?
The support with my Dell Workstation was top notch, english speaking people and it came with 3 years of warranty. The machine never gave me an issue, and I even got support installing a new processor.
There's a big difference between the consumer system and enterprise system support.
Most of the complaints I've seen are based on the consumer side. It sucks, but it's how business is done (i.e. reason for the lower cost of consumer systems vs. enterprise systems).
Xeon is NOT the same as i5 / i7. Not at all. Its a major reason why Mac Pros cost so much. Not sure whats so hard to understand about that. But the main issue to consider as of right now (and its a serious issue, btw, but it also has to be UNDERSTOOD), is that:
It's not a fair comparison of LGA1156 v. LGA1366. But for LGA1366 ONLY, it's more valid. In this case, the only difference is ECC RAM is disabled in the consumer parts, and enabled in the Xeon parts.
As most don't actually need ECC, it's not an issue. So economy of scale kicks in, and makes the consumer parts a bit cheaper in terms of retail pricing (i7 family using LGA1366 sockets). On the supply end, there's no difference in cost (i.e. Quad core Xeon and i7's have the same quantity pricing).
For those that really do need ECC, they don't have a choice. Xeon it is.
