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Help me justify my purchase

B

Boomba05

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 18, 2008
9
0
I've only been a Mac user for a short time. I started with a MacBook for travel, and I've loved every moment of it. I've decided that my PC and I need to end our 6 year relationship. I told myself that once they announced the new Mac Pro, that I would get one, and since that time has arrived, I've put the wheels in motion finance-wise to get one.

However, now that I've had a few weeks to mull over my decision, I'm starting to have a hard time justifying it to myself. I looked into top end Alienware and Dell computers, just as a comparison, and it looks like I can save a couple hundred dollars with one of those options. I wouldn't say money is an issue, I've saved the required money for any of these machines. I'm not rich by any means, saving a couple hundred bucks sounds great.

I don't do video editing or anything of that nature, I'm mainly an internet junkie, gamer, and music enthusiast. The Mac Pro is overkill, but I think that at this point in my life, I need some overkill. I love the OS, the simplicity of the system, the sexy-ness, and the lack of hair-pulling that the Mac provides.

As a side note, I've been building my own computers for years, but with a newborn, and work as hectic as it is right now, I don't feel up to building my own machine, thus the Dell/Alienware counterpoint instead of a DIY option.

Enough rambling, my questions are as follows:

Is $2900 worth spending on a machine that can be matched by a $2000 machine for all my needs and purposes?

Can I justify paying more for a "gaming" rig that has more than I need (8 cores)?
 
I really haven't known too many people that buy the mac pro just for gaming, music and internet surfing. That's overkill alright. Look at the MacBook Pros. Perhaps one of the new ones due out that they keep talking about. As a new dad, you'll appreciate the mobility I'm sure.
 
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Man, you'd be nuts to get a PC now, when you have macbook already. I'd get a 24" iMac before I'd get a highend PC.

Do what you know you really want and choose a mac.

Chuck
 
My take on it

:D

Well think about it this way, sure its a lot of money to get one of the new Mac Pro's with either a singe or dual processor and the 8800GT, but it really is second to none as far as reliability and ease of use go, and chance are that its going to last you a very long time and it offers you a lot of expandibility and upgradability. And lets face it as far as performance goes its a screamer.

Personally I daily think about the £350+ that I could save if I built myself a similarly spec'd sigle cpu pc, but them I'm reminded that I would brobably be stuck with windows, sure you could mess around with one of the linux incarnations to try and get away from the need to run a anti virus and all the other utils that near constantly run in the background that windows needs to keep itself operational.

Spend the extra bit and give yourself the long term peace of mind to simply know that it going to work.

P.S. I do play the occasional game especially FPS's and for this its XP installed onto Bootcamp, and the first thing id do is disable the ethernet and wifi so as to not allow windows on to the internet and then I play everything optimally without any background apps or process slowing things down severely.

:D
 
Boomba05 said:
I've only been a Mac user for a short time. I started with a MacBook for travel, and I've loved every moment of it. I've decided that my PC and I need to end our 6 year relationship. I told myself that once they announced the new Mac Pro, that I would get one, and since that time has arrived, I've put the wheels in motion finance-wise to get one.

However, now that I've had a few weeks to mull over my decision, I'm starting to have a hard time justifying it to myself. I looked into top end Alienware and Dell computers, just as a comparison, and it looks like I can save a couple hundred dollars with one of those options. I wouldn't say money is an issue, I've saved the required money for any of these machines. I'm not rich by any means, saving a couple hundred bucks sounds great.

I don't do video editing or anything of that nature, I'm mainly an internet junkie, gamer, and music enthusiast. The Mac Pro is overkill, but I think that at this point in my life, I need some overkill. I love the OS, the simplicity of the system, the sexy-ness, and the lack of hair-pulling that the Mac provides.

As a side note, I've been building my own computers for years, but with a newborn, and work as hectic as it is right now, I don't feel up to building my own machine, thus the Dell/Alienware counterpoint instead of a DIY option.

Enough rambling, my questions are as follows:

Is $2900 worth spending on a machine that can be matched by a $2000 machine for all my needs and purposes?

Can I justify paying more for a "gaming" rig that has more than I need (8 cores)?
Click to expand...


Have you thought about getting the quad core version? $500 cheaper but still a bit of overkill for you ;)
 
I guess it depends how much of a hardcore gamer you are. Put it this way...

You get a Mac Pro with the nVidia 8800 card which can play just about everything now. That's almost $3000. The cores and processor speeds will last you quite a few years. If the video card is outdated, upgrade for $300-400.

If you get an iMac, it will last a couple years, but when the video card is outdated, you can't upgrade it and you'll need to buy a whole other machine to play the newest games. So...

Mac Pro + next gen video card = $3400
Current iMac and another iMac in a few years = $4000+
 
It may help to remember the phenomenal resale value!

If you look at 4x 2.66 Mac Pros that came out in August 2006, they are currently ebaying for close to 2k. That's on a 1.5 year old machine that was $2500 new.
 
hmmm, a couple of points

1. i never got this whole save a couple hundred $ when your already spending so much. It just seems a little tedious. a thousand $ yes, even six or seven hundred, but $200? seems like a lot of stress over very little cash. (im not btw saying that this is not a considerable amount of money, but just that when you're spending so much, it seems to make little sense to cut yourself short)

2. If your main use for the comp is gaming, get a pc: its not like they can't surf the net and play music well :). if you plan to create music however, a mac pro and logic is the way to go
 
play game on mac pro is a waste of money.
what do they have 8800GT... yeah in a few months time, that will be ancient history, all your friends will be playing crisis at impossible fps, while you are waiting for apple to upgrade the card like in 2-3 yrs time? mac pro is not for gamer. move on.
 
WhiskerDisker gave the best reason - you already have a MacBook. If you get a PC, then you've got all of the PC-Mac problems, (yes, I know the problems are really minimal, even non-existent by this point in time). But the integration of a Mac Pro into an already Mac-based network is too easy.

Then you can get .mac or some of the other solutions, and use Back-to-my-Mac or something similar, and basically "use" your Mac Pro from afar with your MacBook.

If you've had this PC for 6 years, then you can honestly expect to keep the Mac Pro for six years as well. This means that $3000 spread over 6 years is only $500 a year. That's nothing! You'll spend more than that on gas.

Plus, you can buy an OEM copy of Windows, and use it on your Mac Pro. Can you use an OEM copy of Leopard on an Alienware machine?

However, you will pay more for a Mac Pro. Quite a bit more, if you're pricing a $2900 Mac against a $2000 PC. If you really only want it for gaming or surfing the internet, well, you might be best served with a PC.

As far as a PC goes, I'd rather take the time and shop around, and build my own. You mentioned a newborn, and you might want to look at building a computer as a way to "get away from it all" for a little bit each day. It should really only take a week tops, working for a half hour or so each day, to build a PC. I could do it in less than an hour easily, given all of the right hardware.
 
I own both a Mac Pro now and a relatively new Crappy Wintel Box. The Mac is for me because I love the ease of use OS X and the simple set-up. I have the Crappy Wintel Box because I needed to replace the existing one when the old one crapped out, and the Mac Pro hadn't come out yet. I don't like Vista, it is not intuitive and there is just too much "static" in using it to make it as easy to use as my Mac, but then that has been my experience all along using Mac at home and Wintel at work.

The practical question is how much do you want to spend. because you don't need to spend the $2800 for the Octo, the quad is $500 less, which is what I got and is screamingly fast compared to my old iMac 800 mhz. The reality is that if you're using for normal tasks, even the iMacs are great to use and priced a lot less.

The other question is what set-up do you want? I've hooked my Mac Pro into a 32" Vizio and you can imagine how much better that is as a monitor, which even the 24" iMac isn't doing to duplicate. The reality is that you can do that right now with your MacBook and if the storage on it isn't enough, there are lots of external storage solutions that you ought to consider, including Mac's new TimeMachine, which is an Airport base. I think others here have suggested the MacMini, though my view is that it is due for a refresh and depending on your other needs, might not be the most flexible machine.

Bottom line, if you appreciate Mac and OSX, then why would you even consider going to a Wintel box? The reality IMHO is that even with the Mac Pro Quad, it is such a better tool than anything that the Wintel folks can put out that you shouldn't have any doubt that Apple is the way to go.
 
Once You Own A Mac.... You Won't Go Back

Boomba05 said:
I've only been a Mac user for a short time. I started with a MacBook for travel, and I've loved every moment of it. I've decided that my PC and I need to end our 6 year relationship. I told myself that once they announced the new Mac Pro, that I would get one, and since that time has arrived, I've put the wheels in motion finance-wise to get one.

However, now that I've had a few weeks to mull over my decision, I'm starting to have a hard time justifying it to myself. I looked into top end Alienware and Dell computers, just as a comparison, and it looks like I can save a couple hundred dollars with one of those options. I wouldn't say money is an issue, I've saved the required money for any of these machines. I'm not rich by any means, saving a couple hundred bucks sounds great.

I don't do video editing or anything of that nature, I'm mainly an internet junkie, gamer, and music enthusiast. The Mac Pro is overkill, but I think that at this point in my life, I need some overkill. I love the OS, the simplicity of the system, the sexy-ness, and the lack of hair-pulling that the Mac provides.

As a side note, I've been building my own computers for years, but with a newborn, and work as hectic as it is right now, I don't feel up to building my own machine, thus the Dell/Alienware counterpoint instead of a DIY option.

Enough rambling, my questions are as follows:

Is $2900 worth spending on a machine that can be matched by a $2000 machine for all my needs and purposes?

Can I justify paying more for a "gaming" rig that has more than I need (8 cores)?
Click to expand...
I do not understand how you could go back to a PC after Apple. Like many already said get a lesser model. After more computers than I can remember and most of all their toys I will never buy other than a Mac. Luckily for me I live in a town that has a store and when I can not fix or repair the "Genius" bar always gets me up and running that very day. They have actually replaced more things than I can remember. Recently while installing the new Airport Extreme I was having trouble getting one of my Airport Express communicating with the base. The "Genius" asked how long have I had it and I was honest and said over 3 years. He simply went to the shelve and handed me a brand new one and said it should not have quit like that. Also am on my 5th iPhone thru no fault of my own. Bought the first one on the day of launch and several have just stopped working and have been given a new one every time!! Other than not releasing the new MacBook Pro I have no complaints....
 
I'm somewhat in the same boat - I bought my first Mac, a Mac Mini in Nov. 2006 and have barely touched my PC since then. I've been wanting to somehow get rid of both my PC and Mini for a while now as I've outgrown the Mini, but haven't really had anything to buy. I keep eying laptops but honestly I have no use for a laptop, and hate being limited so much by one. I've got a crappy Dell laptop and that's all I need for travel.

iMacs are nice but in my eyes a good chunk of that money is going into the LCD, and seeing as I have a nice LCD and I've always been of the idea that having those components separate is a good thing, I can't justify it.

Anyways, I'm selling my PC (luckily a friend is buying it), selling my Mini, and buying a Mac Pro. It's overkill for me as well as I don't do any video or photo editing (aside from small personal things) but I think in the long run it will be worth it, especially because I know it will have such longevity and resale value. If my friend wasn't buying my PC I have no doubt that it'd be almost impossible to sell without having to deal with the nightmare of parting it out and selling the various components.

Amyways, despite it being overkill I don't think it's a bad purchase for either of us, mostly because I am getting older and no longer get thrilled about rebuilding a new machine like I used to years ago, and with a new kid you are pretty much going to be in the same boat. It will be a reliable (hopefully ;) ) machine that will be a joy to use for years.

If nothing else, look at it as the last big thing you get to buy for yourself before you start dumping most of your money on that child :) And like others said, I'd never go back to a PC.
 
I've thought about dialing it down to the quad-core. Any reason not to?
 
I'm personnally going to get the quad core and use that money to upgrade other options

you said you were not going to do any editing or processor intensive stuff

I have looked into the benefits of each tailored to my needs and found right now 4 cores is enough

someone in another thread said that the bulk of gaming would be on 1 core not spread out evenly so the multiple cores will not benefit you there

use the money to get the nvida 8800GT graphics card if gaming is one of your needs

MacPro is easier to upgrade than an iMac and has a better resale value and will last you for years
 
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