help setting up first mac pro

[Geosphere]

Hello

I got my first ever mac coming in 15days (20th) A standard mac pro but with the geforce 8800GT. What I will use it for is running Photoshop/Maya for graphics work and simple gaming (world of warcraft) What I want to know is what apps/hardware should I get to get up and running asap?

What I would like to do from reading this site is to buy a Samsun f1 750gb 32mb catch hard drive and use as my main hard drive. Put osx/apps on it then add a second samsun 500gig hard drive for simple backups/storage and then use the mac pro 320gig stock hard drive as a scratch disk / windows xp hard drive. I don't know enough about raid to set them up.

For software I think I need to buy VMware fusion (from what I read its faster to run) To run xp in osx for software like Maya and Zbrush. Is there any other stuff I should look into getting? I have gone along and downloaded stuff like Firefox,vlc skype and other small windows/osx apps I use and would like to have when i get my mac. I know I don't need a virus scan but any major stuff I should look into getting?


Hope you guys can understand me I do suck at explaining stuff. And thank you

 

[stevep]

That's a lot of hard drive space, and personally I wouldn't go for what you outlined.
For backup I'd use an external hard drive, probably a 500gB, and partition it. Use one partition for XP (format as NTFS) and the other for OS X (format as HFS+). That way your backups will be a bit more independent of the computer.
I've read recently (in MacFormat I think) that Parallels is faster for XP and VMWare is faster for Vista - you might want to check up on this.
As for useful programs, there are loads of threads on this. What is useful for you might not be for me - the best thing to do is use the machine for a while and download the free utility type programs as you need them (things like Onyx, VLC etc).

 

[Geosphere]

Hmm I guess your right I will download demos of Parallels ad VNware and see what works better for me.

For hard drives I don't care about space I always say the more the better But My main question is should I replace the 320 stock hard drive with a better one I see a lot of people use stuff like raptors or Samsungs F1