Mac Pro on Apple refurb site - some questions

[thworple]

Hi guys,

Have just spotted that Apple UK has started selling stock Mac Pros (2.66Ghz, 250GB HDD, GeForce 7300GT, 1GB RAM) on their refurb site for £1449. This is a £250 saving on the same model on the regular store, and as such is very tempting.

Now, the video card on it won't do for what I'll be using it for (FCP, After Effects etc.), so I plan on buying the X1900 upgrade kit (£270).
In total that comes to £1719, a saving of £150 over the same spec on the Apple store, plus I'd have a spare GeForce 7300GT, which is fine.

However I have a wireless network at home, and the seperate Airport Extreme card is not compatible with the Mac Pro. My office is too far away from the phoneline in our house (yes I know, blame the people who sold us the house, who had it removed!!) and so wireless connection is a must.

Will a wireless USB dongle suffice, and if so, can anyone point me to a decent one?

And all in all is it worth it for £150 saving?? Am I just being too miserly?

Cheers!

 

[dmw007]

To save that amount of money I think that I would do it if I was in your shoes thworple.

 

[thworple]

To save that amount of money I think that I would do it if I was in your shoes thworple.

Yeah, it is very tempting, especially considering the amount of money I'm going to put into it in the long run (hard drives, extra RAM etc etc).

But the wireless is an issue I've yet to find an answer to. I know that there are various USB dongles which will work with Macs, but the ones I've found state that the drivers support PowerPC Macs, but say nothing about Intel.

Its quite annoying that they aren't as standard on the Mac Pro, and yes I know, most users won't use wireless, but the fact they are Apple's top-of-the-line computers and cost so much I was surprised to see it not being added into the cost of the stock model. I would rather it was an option that could be removed, rather than one that has to be added at extra cost. Ah well, I've reconciled that now I guess.... now to find an alternative for the refurb models.....