There's a Mac Pro (2,1) being offered locally for $1,450. Not sure how much wiggle room there is on it, but here are the relevant specs:
2x quad-core 3.0 Xeon procs.
10GB RAM
1x 1TB 7200RPM HDD
Nvidia GeForce 7300
1x Superdrive
I would probably end up adding a small (60GB?) SDD as the boot drive, but that's about it. I guess a new video card could be an eventual addition, but I don't game or anything. Just basic office productivity, internet, Spotify, light Photoshop, etc. Will probably also end up running Windows 7 in Parallels for work.
I can't imagine that power is a problem. GeekBench on this ~3yr old machine is still loads better than anything currently being offered other than other Mac Pros as best as I can tell. And I'm currently on a 1.5GHz Powerbook with 1GB RAM anyway, so no matter what I get we're looking at a HUGE power increase (I think the GeekBench on my current machine is ~750 vs. ~17,500 for this Mac Pro or approaching 7,000 for the current Airs -- an order of magnitude higher).
The question is basically just price. What would be good on a machine like this? And even though it's a couple years old, what do we think the prospects look like for future support? Obviously I like to hold on to machines for a while.
2x quad-core 3.0 Xeon procs.
10GB RAM
1x 1TB 7200RPM HDD
Nvidia GeForce 7300
1x Superdrive
I would probably end up adding a small (60GB?) SDD as the boot drive, but that's about it. I guess a new video card could be an eventual addition, but I don't game or anything. Just basic office productivity, internet, Spotify, light Photoshop, etc. Will probably also end up running Windows 7 in Parallels for work.
I can't imagine that power is a problem. GeekBench on this ~3yr old machine is still loads better than anything currently being offered other than other Mac Pros as best as I can tell. And I'm currently on a 1.5GHz Powerbook with 1GB RAM anyway, so no matter what I get we're looking at a HUGE power increase (I think the GeekBench on my current machine is ~750 vs. ~17,500 for this Mac Pro or approaching 7,000 for the current Airs -- an order of magnitude higher).
The question is basically just price. What would be good on a machine like this? And even though it's a couple years old, what do we think the prospects look like for future support? Obviously I like to hold on to machines for a while.