To be blunt. You would be ripping yourself off paying full price. Just my opinion of course. They are no longer worth $2500. If you are a student go for that discount or even ADC.
Refurbs are often better than new ones. As they are inspected very well. There is no reason not to trust a refurb. That is up to you of course.
If you need it now. Buy it now. But be full aware that an update is imminent. Which means to stay away from Macrumors for a little while. 😀
Refurbs are a toss-up.
Some are good, some are great, and some are terrible.
My last refurb was an iMac G5 and arrived with physical damage to the case (a big chip in it). The damage was not caused in shipping, it was there when it shipped (quite obvious).
It also had a dead ethernet port right out of the box. So, I lost use of it right away because it was in the service center within the hour. I had to wait several days for a new logic board to arrive and be installed (the only option Apple would offer me).
But, when I took it out of the box, I also had a huge cleaning process ahead of me before I even set it up to find the dead ethernet port.
The monitor had huge scuff marks on it's surface, and required a lot of diligent scrubbing to remove them.
The case was filthy dirty. The center ring in the back of the stand had some smeared and embedded smears of some former grime (came off with 409 cleaner).
The cords were all used, and had scuff marks and streaks all over them (cleaned them up).
The mouse was very chipped-up, and looked well abused. It also had a sticky clicker. I finally got them to replace it about 2 months later.
They also after much arguing finally replaced the chipped portion of the case.
But, then after that the backlight started flickering.
Then, the LCD screen started etching images from too much heat (not the image persistence you hear of, but etched like it would be if you drew it with a razor blade).
The etching was in the pattern of anything that remained on the screen for about 5 or 10 minutes (the heat just cooked it into the surface of the screen). This was verified by the shop. Fortunately, they agreed to replace the screen as well.
The tech joked that I pretty much had a new computer at the end.
Since so much was wrong with it physically and functionally, I was glad I had paid refurb price and not new price.
Other than that, the one other thing that I would say is that the refurb arrived in packaging that was very much inferior to the standard new packaging (I had previously purchased a new one).
The new packaging holds everything very securely.
The refurb packaging is not as secure, and a lot of things are just loosely placed in there.
As for the Mac Pro, the refurb doesn't come with WiFi or BlueTooth. And, you cannot add them later. So, if you want those, you'll have to go new (I asked when I ordered).
Anyway, if you go with a refurb, you could get a great package. But, you may not. It all depends on what they send you. Maybe the bad one will get you, maybe it won't. Just depends.
Oh, and for the record, the G5's continued to be problematic for me. So, I no-longer have them. Been getting by with a G4 Mini that I had before.
