buy a mac pro

RE: “A mac pro is just too expensive. There is no reason why I need all 8 cores churning away performing some super number crunching. A mac mini running a dual core processor is plenty for desktop computing. People don’t need to have a personal super computer. Besides a mac mini is about 1/5th the cost.”

The first major difference between the two machines isn’t just computing power. Graphics power is significantly less with the Mac Mini, since it uses the 64MB (shared) Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics chip and shares system RAM for use by that chip. If you’re into gaming at all, and you don’t want to shell out the cash for a Mac Pro, getting an iMac with dedicated video RAM is a better option.

A mac pro is just too expensive. There is no reason why I need all 8 cores churning away performing some super number crunching. A mac mini running a dual core processor is plenty for desktop computing. People don’t need to have a personal super computer. Besides a mac mini is about 1/5th the cost.

I’ll have it Friday, 11/17/06. The two 500GB hard drives are already here, so I just need to pop those in and get going when it arrives.

The configuration I selected is as follows.

Processor: 2.66 GHz Quad Xeon
Memory: 1GB 667 DDR2 FB DIMM ECC-2×512
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB
Hard Drive Bay1: 160GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s drive
Hard Drive Bay2: None
Hard Drive Bay3: None
Hard Drive Bay4: None
Optical Drive: 2×16x SuperDrive DL
Wireless Option: Airprt Extrm & BT 2.0+EDR
Modem: None
Fibre Chl Card: None
Keyboard Language: Apple Kybd & Wrls Mgty Ms
Mac SVR OS Language: None
Apple Software Applications: None
Mac OS Language: Mac OS X
Country Kit: Country Kit

I have my Mac Pro configuration picked out, and am about ready to purchase it. 11/10/06 is the date I’m going with right now. I should have it by the following week. I’m having it shipped with the upgraded ATI video card, and the downgraded 160GB hard drive. I plan to add two 500GB hard drives immediately, and will load Windows XP onto the 160GB stock drive that comes with it. One of the 500GB drives will be for OS X, and the other will be for cloning OS X and the Windows XP installation.

The only loose ends to tie up seem to be partitions and additional RAM. I’m not sure how I’m going to go with regard to partitions, yet, and 2GB of RAM (two 1GB modules) look like they are going to cost me around $350 additional. These will come about a month after purchase.

I’m getting really excited now.

http://www.mymacblog.com