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What are your reasons for buying a Mac Pro?

DoFoT9 said:
fair enough point - your videos look very professional (given your equiptment and the crappy quality of the internet). i would still try my best to maintain the website effectively and efficiently as people will judge by everything they see, not just the music that you are playing (that the way i have experienced it anyway). your music is good, you need a solid website to back that up.

yup i play drums, i dont have a website or anything - i would love one or even a set of youtube vids, but i dont have the equipment to record it all how i would like. i have a youtube thingo (DoFoT9 is my username), with only 1 drumming video. its pathetic to say the least :p i need to put some "semi-pro" apps up.
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Well, a SD or HD Video Cam and iMovie will make a great job for youtube videos. Consumer Camera's have become very good in the last few years ! I'm gonna add you if you don't mind :) I did everything by myself so far, I am into making designs and stuff but have only a small horizon of coding webpage. So I probably although need to find some people, which are pro with coding a good webpage. You're totally right about your points !

I'm gonna check out your video ;-)
 
seisend said:
Well, a SD or HD Video Cam and iMovie will make a great job for youtube videos. Consumer Camera's have become very good in the last few years ! I'm gonna add you if you don't mind :) I did everything by myself so far, I am into making designs and stuff but have only a small horizon of coding webpage. So I probably although need to find some people, which are pro with coding a good webpage. You're totally right about your points !

I'm gonna check out your video ;-)
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i have one SD DV camera, its a good 8 years old and getting on but seems to do the job. i would love another two camera (one on my feet and another near cymbals etc), but funds are null currently.

please dont watch the video, its TERRIBLE! haha. i should really get onto that and post a few more!! check back in a few days or something haha :p
 
thisThread.isOfftopic = FALSE; ;)

After switching from a PowerMac DP 2.5 (watercooled, no leaks – at least as long as I had it) to an iMac 20" 2.0 CoreDuo, then to an iMac 24" 2.16 C2D (for FireWire800), I decided I needed expandability and more power. My 2006 Mac Pro also isn't nearly as loud as the G5 was; louder than the iMacs, though, of course.

Added an eSATA card and turned my home-made backup system from FW800 to eSATA (only 68 Euros in all!), and eSATA rocks!
Also added a USB-card for my DVB-T receivers; the iMac's bandwidth wasn't even sufficient to handle those and FW800 traffic at the same time (neither is the onboard USB/FireWire controller of the Mac Pro...).

Right now I have my upgrade CPUs (see my sig) lying in front of me, desperately waiting for the Allen key I ordered and need for the upgrade... :(
 
I was heavily into home theater and was using a home theater PC (HTPC) as my media source. Once my HTPC starting acting a fool, I started pricing what it would take to build my next one. My estimate was somewhere around $2200. During that same time - Christmas 2007 - I bought my first mac, the iMac in my sig.

I was hooked on OS X and all things Mac, and a refurbed Mac Pro was in the price range of my next HTPC, so it really was a no-brainer. I used it for ripping, editing, encoding, and streaming to my Sony G90 projector. I had to learn some new ways of doing things (in OS X), but with a Boot Camp drive in bay #4 I could go either way.

surflorida said:
...because I can :)
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Oh yeah, there was that too :D


James
 
- Well, my dad was gonna buy a Mac Mini as a media centre for the loungeroom...

- And at the same time I was gonna buy a Windows Computer for rendering...

- So I pooled the resources to see what I could get...but none of them were good looking enough to be visible in the lounge room (our entertaining space).

- So I put in the extra thousand dollars for the Mac Pro.

- So I ended up getting the Mac Pro, mainly because of it's looks :p . But I also knew that it was worth the extra money I put in.



On the flip side, having the Mac Pro allows me to do things that I couldn't've done before (HD renders with lights and reflections)
 
Just got a 2.66 quad nehalem ... and boy was my decision process long!

context: currently owning a 1st gen mbpro. amazing how the machine has continued to hold its own, but I hate the wobbly construction, slow cpu, and 2g ram limit. time to upgrade.

choice 1: 13" mbpro
pros: very portable. ram upgradable to 8gig. amazing construction. SUPER CHEAP factoring in student discount + free ipod touch.
cons: CPU is only 30% faster than my 1.86 core duo .. pretty sad for a brand new notebook 3+ years later. can't plug in 2+ monitors. very likely won't be able to play starcraft 2 on my 24" (1920x1200) with it.

choice 2: 24" iMac
pros: relatively cheap. would be able to plug in my 24" for 2x24" setup. amazing construction.
cons: HD is not an easy upgrade, and I plan on going SSD sometime soon. like mbpro, CPU a bit disappointing to me. same starcraft 2/gaming issue with the weak, non upgradable graphics card.

choice 3: mac pro
pro: addresses all the cons above. this is the no-compromise machine.
cons: insane cost, disappointing video card preinstalled (can be fixed with more $$$), disappointing amount of RAM preinstalled (can be fixed with more $$$).

since I buy a computer once every 3-4 years now, i decided to go with the no-compromise choice. i dont do any video editing, i'm a software developer. so, i do use multiple VMs at a time. the price hurts, a lot, even more after buying a 4870, but i'll get over the pain in a few weeks. then i'll have several years to get value out of this machine.

will still keep my trusty mbpro if i need to go portable. looking forward to the tablet for couch surfing. :)
 
1.) I wanted heavy power. I'm a general user and would've likely been fine with an iMac, but time has taught me PCs at least tend to get slow over time when you upgrade the OS, antivirus & malware software gets bulkier, app.s get bloated, etc... More power is seldom regretted.

2.) I wanted to put so much RAM in it that I'd never worry RAM was a limiting factor on performance. 10 gigs is a whole bunch for what I do.

3.) I wanted the option to, if using Windows XP or VISTA under VMWare Fusion, to assign the PC 4 gigs RAM. Hard to do if your machine maxes out at 4 gig. And iMac memory slots are few, and highest capacity RAM modules very, very expensive.

4.) Option to put an extra 1 terabyte HD into the case as a 'scratch disk' if I decided to work with video, and a 1.5 terabyte HD into the case for Time Machine, all working at internal SATA speed, not USB-2 or the like.

5.) Sometimes knowing you've got a MacPro, instead of having an iMac & wondering how much better Life would be if you had a MacPro, is nice.

Mine's an early '08 2.8 GHz octocore MacPro with an old 24" Dell monitor.

My wife has an '09 3.06 GHz 24" iMac with 4 gig RAM & a 1 terabyte HD that works just fine and that screen looks gorgeous (I'm fine with glossy screens). The compact all-in-one form-factor really is elegant and efficient, if you don't need another hard drive, etc...

Richard.
 
drrich2 said:
1.) I wanted heavy power. I'm a general user and would've likely been fine with an iMac, but time has taught me PCs at least tend to get slow over time when you upgrade the OS, antivirus & malware software gets bulkier, app.s get bloated, etc... More power is seldom regretted.

2.) I wanted to put so much RAM in it that I'd never worry RAM was a limiting factor on performance. 10 gigs is a whole bunch for what I do.

3.) I wanted the option to, if using Windows XP or VISTA under VMWare Fusion, to assign the PC 4 gigs RAM. Hard to do if your machine maxes out at 4 gig. And iMac memory slots are few, and highest capacity RAM modules very, very expensive.

4.) Option to put an extra 1 terabyte HD into the case as a 'scratch disk' if I decided to work with video, and a 1.5 terabyte HD into the case for Time Machine, all working at internal SATA speed, not USB-2 or the like.

5.) Sometimes knowing you've got a MacPro, instead of having an iMac & wondering how much better Life would be if you had a MacPro, is nice.

Mine's an early '08 2.8 GHz octocore MacPro with an old 24" Dell monitor.
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Wow, these are almost all of my reasons for getting a Mac Pro too - I certainly don't *NEED* all the power this machine is capable of, but I do stress it a lot of the time to where it's using an *average* of 8 gigs of RAM.

iMac + Core2Duo + max 8 gigs wasn't gonna cut it :)

My other main reason is that I can't stand all in one computers - If your screen dies, you lose access to your computer, potentially for 1-2 weeks. I'm not willing to go without for that long :)

You also can't change out the hard drive - worse, you can only have ONE...I came from 20 years of using PC desktops where you could add multiple hard drives, and I took full advantage of it. So when I started looking at Apple, the Mac Pro was the ONLY option for me (I'm in the "would love to have a midsize tower option" camp...although now I've really been spoiled by how incredible this machine is.)

Finally, I bought something that's got so much power that I'll be using it for a very long time - 1.5 years so far, probably at least another 3-3.5 before I'm ready to upgrade. When I do, this machine will be a decent downpayment on a NEW Mac Pro :)

Always buy the best you can afford, and you'll rarely regret it. And remember - you get what you pay for!
 
I bought it for my 5 year old daughter :cool: She uses it as her doll house :rolleyes:

I think it was a good investment. :apple:
 
IronFixXxeR said:
Expandability: I hate external drives. I store a lot of media on my computer and require more than a single drive in an iMac or Mac Mini. Ability to upgrade components if needed. Others have already dropped in 3.33 GHz i7s into these!

Speed: Fastest Macs out there! Hackintoshes don't count.

Longevity: Before I bought my 09 Mac Pro I used a 2002 G4 Quicksilver. It still runs great but is getting a little too slow for what I want to do. The thing was flawless aside from some fans getting clogged up with pet hair... XD. I expect to get a good 7 years or more from this one as well.

Mac OS X: This is a given. For daily use this, just, works.
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exactly... and when i bought it, it replaced a dual 2ghz Power Mac G5, and it was the best i could afford, might of been the best on the market(think it was), and anything was painfully slow... when they make a laptop as fast, i will buy one. anything under 1333mhz FSB and not quad core makes me sad.

even then, i dont think i will go to a MBP when my work laptop does the job, might just buy a new MP next refresh...
 
There are a few reasons, as everyone in this thread seems to echo:

Price: I got my MacPro1,1 at a corporate fire sale for $1000 (with 4 drives and a 23" Cinema HD thrown in). The price made it an instant bargain even without the upgrades I've applied. I could have sold it on eBay for $2,000 that day, but then...

Upgrades: I upgraded the hard drives, CPUs, video card, and I'm getting the 2-bay SATA expansion kit to hold 6 SATA drives. With 2 quad-core Xeons, this thing is a high-end server platform and will last for years (even without full 64-bit kernel support in Snow Leopard, which may change later).

Accessibility: this beast is so easy to work on! I've never seen a PC case built so well - I praise the case designer of this thing every day. You just can't do that on any other Mac model.

The OS: I was a Mac guy in college, and it's great to return to it.

This Pro will make a great encoding server with stability and tons of storage. I will never regret keeping it. You'll feel the same way I think.

JP
 
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