Purchase $8000 Mac Pro now? or wait for Leopard?

[KniVideo]

Greetings everybody,

I was recently elected president of Emory University's television station/video production program. As a result, I have taken it upon myself to completely redesign our studio from an obsolete, analog workstation into a digital, computer based system. I already have a proposal with Apple for about $25,000 worth of apple products, including an Xserve RAID system. I'm certain that I'm making the right choices on what to buy, but I'm unsure of when I should make the purchase. In particular, I'm worried about buying an 8-core, 8 gig memory Mac Pro before Leopard is released. I wanted to have the computer set up during the first month of the coming academic year (september), but it looks like I might just miss the release of Leopard by about a month. Of course, there's no telling when Leopard will actually be released.. but I'm wondering what any of you would suggest. If anyone could help me by discussing the pros/cons of either purchasing the Mac Pro before the release of Leopard or waiting for its release - it would be very appreciated. Thanks

 

[TimJim]

dont wait for leopard. the only new chages will be timemachine and spaces which i dont think you need that much in my opinion

 

[Luigi239]

dont wait for leopard. the only new chages will be timemachine and spaces which i dont think you need that much in my opinion

Thats not true, there are many more upgrades and enhancements, some of which we dont know about yet. One of those being core animation.

I say buy it now, and just upgrade to Leopard if you can.

 

[FF_productions]

So you are waiting to spend 8000 dollars because of Leopard?

You can get Leopard for 129 dollars when it comes out and just upgrade.

Are you going to be using Final Cut Studio?

I suggest going here: http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa

Check out the Final Cut Pro forum and ask for some help there. They will help you set up your studio, these guys are real professionals and will help you out.

 

[Fearless Leader]

There is a bit of a memory bandwidth problem currently, leopard wont fix it but by then the stoakley platform will be out with penryn chip and that'll be great.

 

[Frankf300]

Buy now, as you know the Mac Pros just got updated so there is nothing to worry about, hardware wise. I don't think you should wait just because of Leopard. You're better off getting your studio all set up and squared away now. Then once Leopard is released you can just upgrade the OS to Leopard. If you're planning on going with an Octo, you definitely don't have to worry about running Leopard. I don't think any Mac Pro would have a bit of trouble running Leopard lol. I would say to buy your hardware now, if need be, just upgrade once Leopard is released. After all, a 5 pack of licenses will only run you $199. Keep us up to date, I would love to just touch an octo Mac Pro let alone enjoy editing on one.

 

[jng]

Since you don't need the equipment until the start of the academic year, I'd wait a little bit, at least until WWDC and see if you'd at least benefit from some price drops or minor upgrades to other lines, since it appears that the octo mac is not the only machine you're interested in.

And yes I also second not waiting for Leopard.

 

[Pressure]

There is a bit of a memory bandwidth problem currently, leopard wont fix it but by then the stoakley platform will be out with penryn chip and that'll be great.

Penryn and the Stoakley platform will not solve it either. The Front Side bus is still only limited to one bus per processor.

 

[DVNIEL]

I'm surprised no one has acknowledged this yet but congratulations on your newly elected office. Coordinating and delegating tasks for a university is no easy walk in the park. Good luck with all your choices and decisions

 

[puckhead193]

just out of curiosity, what else do u plan on purchasing...

 

[0007776]

I would suggest waiting until WWDC and then see if there is anything in Leopard that you want to wait for, but it won't be too expensive to upgrade later.

 

[Rod Rod]

I don't think any Mac Pro would have a bit of trouble running Leopard lol.

The more important question is how well Final Cut Studio will run on Leopard. There's no doubt that it will work. I wouldn't jump into Leopard on a production (or teaching lab) machine.

 

[NorCalLights]

If them Emory IT department is anything like the IT department was at my university, you'll want to keep them as far away from your computer lab as possible... but... they probably have a site license for OSX and they will get the upgrade when it comes out. So buy now, and then upgrade once Final Cut and the rest of your pro apps are proven stable on 10.5.

Congrats on your new position... I hope that helps.

 

[solvs]

Buy it now. Max the heck out of it. Get more RAM (third party if possible), and lots of drive space (also third party). Easy to install yourself. Get the Radeon GPU and some nice monitors. Spend some time with it, play with FCS2. When Leopard comes out, you can get it for ~$69 with the educational discount (you are going to use the college's edu discount right?) and install it on another drive to make sure everything works before deploying it.

Nothing wrong with waiting until after WWDC, but if you wait for Leopard and the next update, you could be waiting a long time.

 

[Jopling]

I don't know why you are spending 8k on one computer when you have a budget of 25k. You aren't going to be doing extremely intensive work on the macpro that you'd need 8 gigs of ram IMOP. I think it would be more important to have as many machines as possible, that way students have easier access to the tools they need when creating programming.

 

[Evangelion]

I'm certain that I'm making the right choices on what to buy, but I'm unsure of when I should make the purchase.

Simple: if you need the machine now, you buy it now. If you don't need it, then why buy it?

If you are thinking about waiting because "this amazing piece of tech will be released soon", be prepared for a long wait. There's always new stuff being released just around the corner. If you wait for Leopard, how about waiting for 1.5.1, so they can fix the worst new bugs that ship with it? After that, there might be new hardware coming soon, not to mention 1.5.2, so why not wait just a bit longer still?

Since this is a production-machine, why not stick to the tried and tested Tiger, instead of jumping to brand-new Leopard?