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Can I really justify a Mac Pro?

Get an older 2.8x8 refurb for 2399. You just missed the end of life on them for 1899 at the apple store.

Older systems seem to be near 2000 bucks on ebay for the first gen mac pro. A couple hundred more you get 8 cores and more importantly a warranty.

Could also save some more cash and get a refurb 2.8x4 MP for 1999 on apples refurb page.

Warranty would be my only concern buying an older MP. They hold their value so well older models aren't much cheaper than new ones.

I bought an end of life MP from apple. We had similar problems, already had the HD's, monitors and such. I also don't like an all in one. My biggest use is some light photo work and ripping of dvds.
 
I hate to tell someone what to do in this situation, but I'll tell you how I ended up in the Mac Pro camp.

I love my iMac's still have 2 of them at the house. But the main iMac was starting to look like a FW800 party had broke out. I have a Drobo, and a half dozen external drives strung together. Also add a duplicate of everything here at home stored off site. Literally FW800 should pay me some royalties. :) When this spring my iMac started to beach ball on a regular basis I did what I always do in this situation I added more RAM. Help's for a little while but at the end of the day an iMac is not a workstation. Now a few hours of video editing or any extended period of encoding and I have CPU temps in the 90º Celsius range. I can't really run anything else on the iMac because I'm out of physical memory. I know OS X will shuffle the memory off to where I need it but eventually their just isn't anywhere else to squeeze some more RAM from.

So I started looking online at my choices I could go with the new iMac's with 8GB of RAM. Or I could take a chance and go with the Mac Pro and add RAM as I need it. So even though the initial cost is much steeper, I think in the long run it is a worthwhile investment. In time I can upgrade the graphics card or add up to 32GB of RAM. I still have access to my FW800 farm now with 4 FW800 ports instead of 1 on the iMac. I can upgrade the graphics card as needed. IF Blu-ray becomes an option in the future I can add a Blu-ray drive myself. The expandibility finally sold me on the Pro over another iMac. I'm guessing that Snow Leopard, and eventually Adobe will begin to use more of the multi-core technology in the Mac Pro.
 
dukebound85 said:
makr a hackintosh. its easy
Click to expand...

I've tried the hackint0sh route many times (sony vaio TZ, dell inspiron q9300) it worked fine but some things it had glitches with. But in the end it felt like a broken version of OSX. Especially when new updates are released and trying to install those packages, just felt like might as well run windows vista.
 
bigbird said:
Yeah, you're right, I made it all up. Snow leopard will be no different than 10.5.7.
Click to expand...

Yes, because I said it will be no different.

Or maybe I said it will be different, but may not disproportionately improve the MP vs. the iMac, unless software, yet to be written, takes advantage of more cores.

I'm amazed people still thing arguing by strawman works.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

My feeling is that it's not a cut-and-dry situation and I'm still not really sure what I'll do.

I take the point about the MP being more expandable. Although it does grate a bit that the current quad-core only has 4 slots for RAM (the same as the iMac). Not super-expandable then! (What was Apple thinking of here?) Of course the 8-core has a lot more, but then that cost is looking way higher.

I'm also inclined to believe the people who say that the MP is just better engineered and so in the long run it's going to get less hot.

I had a quick look at second hand and refurb machines. But to my eyes those things all look pretty expensive. If I'm going to basically spend £2000 on a computer I kind of feel like it should be the latest architecture and the latest type of processor.

I guess my other option is to shore up my MBP for a while by putting in a bigger internal drive and re-installing OSX. Perhaps that will make it feel a bit more snappy. Shame I already hit the 3GB RAM maximum.

I guess I can't actually see myself actually buying the iMac with that glossy screen (although if I was in front of the iMac while I was buying it, of course I could see myself ;).
 
Mac Pro lines tend to have a longer "usable" life

Hi there:

I posted a question about my buyer's remorse for an '08 Mac Pro 2.8 8-core refurb last week, and like others say, it really depends on your situation/what you do on it. I was able to get 6 years life out of my dual G4 1.25 tower with maxed out 2GB RAM, but more and more, I'm feeling the age of the system.

I do graphic design work (print and web), and for the little bit of Flash work I've gotten, its been EXTREMELY painful to work. The slow performance things like slow "Undos" and slow switching between tools (in most of my CS3 apps), and I've probably wasted dozens of hours time wrestling with the symptoms of my 6-year-old system.

In the past, I have considered purchasing an iMac, but given all the design work I do, an all-in-one solution just wasn't for me. I like options. I like expandability. I like a system to grow as I do...without having to run out and buy a new system. I'm also a refurb convert. My current system was a refurb, and its been a great system. I run Tiger on it without issue. It still boots in about 10-15 seconds...show me a 6-year-old Windoze system that can do that. But even this system has reached its limits for me and the direction I want to take my work. Another thing I want to try my hand @ is 3-D work and maybe some animation. The problem was, that my system couldn't handle it.

My dual G4 mirror door system will find a new home with my partner as a master music system to two slave windows systems, so I feel good that it won't sit and collect dust. Because I'll now be able to virtualize Windows on the new system, I can also ditch my cheap Compaq that I got to do work for one of my clients...this is becoming part of his music setup as well. Many of the composers he admires have similar setups even with G3 blue towers...so I know this one will work for him.

So, whenever I can save some $$ (about $600 less than the exact same system config on Amazon) and get a pretty recent system (The one I ordered last week is only about 6-month old) that I know will grow with my needs, I go for it. If I can get 6+ years out of my old dualie G4 mirror door system, I'm sure I can get as much, if not longer out of my new Mac Pro...

And on top of that, I have an "extra" $600 that I can use to buy some memory/drive upgrades too...

Good luck with your decision! I know folks' feedback on here have helped me feel better about the decision I made...
 
thesheep said:
Thanks for all the replies.

My feeling is that it's not a cut-and-dry situation and I'm still not really sure what I'll do.

I take the point about the MP being more expandable. Although it does grate a bit that the current quad-core only has 4 slots for RAM (the same as the iMac). Not super-expandable then! (What was Apple thinking of here?) Of course the 8-core has a lot more, but then that cost is looking way higher.

I'm also inclined to believe the people who say that the MP is just better engineered and so in the long run it's going to get less hot.

I had a quick look at second hand and refurb machines. But to my eyes those things all look pretty expensive. If I'm going to basically spend £2000 on a computer I kind of feel like it should be the latest architecture and the latest type of processor.

I guess my other option is to shore up my MBP for a while by putting in a bigger internal drive and re-installing OSX. Perhaps that will make it feel a bit more snappy. Shame I already hit the 3GB RAM maximum.

I guess I can't actually see myself actually buying the iMac with that glossy screen (although if I was in front of the iMac while I was buying it, of course I could see myself ;).
Click to expand...

Is this sluggishness of your MBP due to your processor, or is your hard drive lagging? A comparatively inexpensive hard drive solution is to get a SSD.
 
Look at the refurb, get the 08 Eight core 2.8GHZ mac pro. In single thread work it will be near the Imac, and in multi core apps, it will fly!
You cant have it for 2399, and with some cash you can throw some Ram and HDs.
Good Luck.
 
I know its been said before, but...

+1 for the Mac Pro.

Better expandability, longer (potential) lifespan, better resale value, etc, etc.
 
js81 said:
I know its been said before, but...

+1 for the Mac Pro.

Better expandability, longer (potential) lifespan, better resale value, etc, etc.
Click to expand...

Yes, but people should realize that while the resale value is better, even much better than a consumer system, it's still not all that high. Thanks to eBay and Craigslist. Great for buyers of used computer gear, not for sellers.
 
Buy a used Quad-core.... or wait for Nehalem in quad-core to hit the iMac. You really don't need that much.
 
Just curious, will the apple store allow you to bring in a disk of project files to test on one of their machines?

In order to answer the question of whether the mac pro is justified costwise, you need to start at the beginning and find out "does the mac pro solve my sluggishness problem? Only you can answer that question with your specific projects. The ideal situation is that you want to "test drive" the mac pro in a way that is no cost to you!
 
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