New 8-core Mac pros

cowasaki

cowasaki

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£1749 for a 2.8Ghz EIGHT core Xeon Mac pro with 2Gb Ram and now with higher spec graphics, SAS/SATA interface, bluetooth included.

And a 3.2Ghz one for and an extra £1009 ! hardly seems worth bothering!
 
Yeah right, have you seen the RAM and HDD prices too!!

I thought I'd rather have a 2.8Ghz and grab the extra's from somewhere else.
 
Mac's seem to me to be extremely expensive against a PC, yet I'm at the stage at which I need to replace my PC laptop.

All I am confronted with is Vista, and from experience you do not buy a new platform from Microsoft until at least the first service pack comes out!.......but I feel like a change, I have been told that Mac's are far better for graphics applications......is this true? Are they worth the extra?
 
Yep they are better and with the introduction of the Mac Mini's they can be had for as little as £250 for the older G4 or £400 for the newer Intel models. I run one four of them now and only my tablet laptop remains from my old Windows network. As soon as I can afford it thats gone too.

@ IanC_UK: RAM can be had for very little from Crucial and even Play have an offer on Kingston RAM at the mo. I'd never dream of paying Apple prices :)
 
I have been a PC user for more years than i care to think about, bought myself a macbook pro (Dixons Tax Free well worth the 50 quid channel crossing cost :)) should have been 1599 cost me 1360 :) they are expensive yes and if you use loads of apps etc then converting over will be expensive, but i havent looked back, i find the mac far more useable for me, i dont have to keep fixing it for one :) as i work in IT thats a relief :)

It handles Lightroom and CS3 better than my PC ever did and takes up far less room :)
 
Macs are cheaper than PCs!!

stands back for barrage.

If you compare like for like then Macs can work out cheaper so long as you are a savvy buyer! I bought a QUAD Xeon Mac pro for 1699 (minus 11% student discount but we will work on no discount) Inside this are 2 Dual Xeon processors which if bought from a discount store like Scan are still £1080. Plus case, PSU, Xeon motherboard, 1Gb Ram, 250Gb HD, Video card, etc etc

Now the value is even better an 8 core 2.8GHz Mac pro with 2Gb ram is £1749 - compare this with the equivalent Workstation PC from a top brand! The equivalents are £3000-4000!

By being savvy I am talking about buying hard drives and memory elsewhere. I bought 3 500Gb Seagate enterprise quality drives for £200 and 5Gb of extra Ram for about £300 giving me an absolute monster of a computer!

With laptops you can get a 2GHz dual core Macbook for just over £600 (with a student disc) or £699 without - This compares with a QUALITY laptop like a Sony Vaio or similar!

Anyway this thread was never meant to be YET ANOTHER PC v MAC debate, it was just me drooling over 'the latest thing'. If I had waited till this month I could have had a D300 and an 8 core Apple Mac for the same price as a D200 and QUAD core but then I would have missed 4 months pleasure I have had out of both of them and to be honest my QUAD core flys through everything I chuck at it and the D200 is a superb camera so I'm not really missing anything!
 
So ... question for all techy types ... :suspect:


I have been looking at a MacBook cos they ain't half purdy ... :D

However ... I have a PC Desktop and a Dell Lappy on a home wireless network I managed to set up myself ... :eek:

Travelling up and down the country quite a bit lately I'm minded to get a dinky sized lappy/Mac to accompany me on my travels rather than the hefty old Dell ... as good as it is ...

... so if I went for a purdy l'il mac book could I introduce it to my home network with the other two ... :shrug: ...

... or would I have to treat it like a new camera system and blow all the old lot out and start afresh on the Mac platform ... :thinking:


Not sure I have seen this discussed elsewhere on here but someone, somewhere must have tried it ... :D



:p
 
My macbook pro is connected to the same router and wireless setup as the previous PC and my current work laptop Ven :) and as long as external hard drives are Fat32 you can read and werite to them no issue as well, only NTFS ones are read only. May not be able to look into shared folders on XP or Vista, havent tried that yet
 
That sounds encouraging Ian ... :thankyou:

I suppose with a Windows system loaded on it too I could access all of my current files through the network ... logically ... :shrug:

Do you have any trouble with the two differing operating systems and their idiosyncrasies ... :thinking:



:p
 
Nope none at all, some of the workings are a bit different, ie control panel doesnt exist, but there is a thing called system preferences that does the same things pretty much.

I have VMWare Fusion on mine, much like parallels, and i can run vista or XP as a virtual machine at the same time as Leopard and it runs fine, i even converted my work laptop and can vpn into work from the macbook lol :) Make sure the Windows virtual machines have anti virus though !

The biggest thing for me, i can look at my 1d Mk3 raw images with no additional software ! I have iWork08 which does everything i need from office as well and only costs 1/4 of the price.

Oh and i pulled a blinder in the Warehouseexress sale, they had a full version of CS2 (reduced from 499 to 100) and bought the upgrade to CS3 so have a fully licensed version of CS3 for 259 quid :)
 
Venomator said:
So ... question for all techy types ... :suspect:


I have been looking at a MacBook cos they ain't half purdy ... :D

However ... I have a PC Desktop and a Dell Lappy on a home wireless network I managed to set up myself ... :eek:

Travelling up and down the country quite a bit lately I'm minded to get a dinky sized lappy/Mac to accompany me on my travels rather than the hefty old Dell ... as good as it is ...

... so if I went for a purdy l'il mac book could I introduce it to my home network with the other two ... :shrug: ...

... or would I have to treat it like a new camera system and blow all the old lot out and start afresh on the Mac platform ... :thinking:


Not sure I have seen this discussed elsewhere on here but someone, somewhere must have tried it ... :D



:p
Click to expand...

A Mac will quite happily mix with your PCs on your home network. It should be no problem at all, if you cannot get it to work give me a shout. It is a matter of changing the workgroup and giving your mac a name. I expect you have a router on your network using DHCP if so the Mac will get its IP address just like the PCs.

Your mac will also come with Mac OS Leopard which includes bootcamp, this will allow it to run XP or Vista so you can use it for either platform.

Your files should be no problem as both machines tend to use the same file types. Mac and PC use different CD formats BUT toast on the Mac will write discs that can be read by either one.
 
IanC_UK said:
Nope none at all, some of the workings are a bit different, ie control panel doesnt exist, but there is a thing called system preferences that does the same things pretty much.

I have VMWare Fusion on mine, much like parallels, and i can run vista or XP as a virtual machine at the same time as Leopard and it runs fine, i even converted my work laptop and can vpn into work from the macbook lol :) Make sure the Windows virtual machines have anti virus though !

The biggest thing for me, i can look at my 1d Mk3 raw images with no additional software ! I have iWork08 which does everything i need from office as well and only costs 1/4 of the price.

Oh and i pulled a blinder in the Warehouseexress sale, they had a full version of CS2 (reduced from 499 to 100) and bought the upgrade to CS3 so have a fully licensed version of CS3 for 259 quid :)
Click to expand...

That's great info Ian ... thanx again ... :thumbs:

And lucky you with the CS2 trick ... ;)

cowasaki said:
A Mac will quite happily mix with your PCs on your home network. It should be no problem at all, if you cannot get it to work give me a shout. It is a matter of changing the workgroup and giving your mac a name. I expect you have a router on your network using DHCP if so the Mac will get its IP address just like the PCs.

Your mac will also come with Mac OS Leopard which includes bootcamp, this will allow it to run XP or Vista so you can use it for either platform.

Your files should be no problem as both machines tend to use the same file types. Mac and PC use different CD formats BUT toast on the Mac will write discs that can be read by either one.
Click to expand...

Very helpful cowasaki ... :thankyou: ... and I certainly appreciate the offer of assistance ... ;) ... you never know I may just take you up on that ... :D




:p
 
macs...they just work - sounds like a cliche, but, most of the time, it is actually true.

I use both at work and sometimes find myself using the mac platform most of the time depending what I'm doing. The old days of file incompatibilities are long gone as either platform can save to formats that both will understand. Network technologies are such that standards are just that meaning that your existing network will work just fine with the mac. Also, with the availability of Parallels and VMware Fusion you can also run windows at the same time as the mac OS (boot camp means you have to choose between OS on boot).

As other people have mentioned, don't hesitate to get in touch if you have a problem should you decide to go the mac route.
 
kfridge said:
As other people have mentioned, don't hesitate to get in touch if you have a problem should you decide to go the mac route.
Click to expand...

Thanx kfridge ... :thumbs: ... appreciate the info confirmation and the kind offer of assistance ... :D

Certainly sounds as if there isn't a lot to hold me back ... :naughty:




:p
 
been using a mac for 3 and half years, just bought my second mac. I find it hard to believe, certainly in the next 5 to ten years, that i'd go back to windows.

They just simply work, and every time you get used to doing something on a mac you say to yourself "well why isn't it like that on windows"

The lovely people at mac just think of everything, and then they make sure the integration between hardware and software works seamlessly.
 
Venomator said:
How long do you reckon before the MacBook gets an upgrade from the 2 core configuration ... :shrug:
Click to expand...

probably a while! it would be a bit warm on the lap and the battery would last all of a few minutes :lol:

I did read somewhere some speculating that Apple were going to release and octocore macbook at next weeks mac-expo :thinking: somehow I don't think so!
 
Venomator said:
Oh well ... :shrug: ... thanks though ... :thumbs:
Click to expand...

Seriously though, I would wait until next weeks mac-expo if you are planning to buy anything. There could be all manner of Apple goodness released!
 
Thanx for the HU on that ... I will keep my eyes peeled ... :D ... although I wasn't planning on rushing into it for a few weeks yet ... :naughty: ... probably ... :D





:p
 
Venomator said:
How long do you reckon before the MacBook gets an upgrade from the 2 core configuration ... :shrug:
:p
Click to expand...


As soon as Apple decide to but it would be the Macbook Pro first! Intel are sampling 4 core mobile processors and now that Apple are one of their biggest customers it is quite likely that they could get first dibbs on them. They had ALL the 3GHz Quad core Xeons of the last generation, you couldn't buy them anywhere else! It would only be a matter of sticking the quad core mobile processor into the machine they are electrically compatible.

Also they are getting the power consumption to the point where the quad core processors are not producing too much heat or using too much power!
 
Just seen this thread... :)

My new Macpro has been ordered and should be with me within 5weeks...

8-core 2.8ghz, 8800gt, 2gb, 320gb HDD... Getting it 10% under retail using my EPP. :)
 
Just a word on compatibility with NTFS, their is a program out for the Mac which will emable you to read and write to NTFS partitioned drives, I have had it installed since it became available and it works faultlessly, I use it as a lot of clients give me HDD formated NTFS with files on.

details here http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
 
Darryn said:
Just seen this thread... :)

My new Macpro has been ordered and should be with me within 5weeks...

8-core 2.8ghz, 8800gt, 2gb, 320gb HDD... Getting it 10% under retail using my EPP. :)
Click to expand...

just noticed where you are from...bonnie Colne! Used to live there, and then just down the road in Foulridge...had to move over the border into Yorkshire a few years ago :(

mho said:
Just a word on compatibility with NTFS, their is a program out for the Mac which will emable you to read and write to NTFS partitioned drives, I have had it installed since it became available and it works faultlessly, I use it as a lot of clients give me HDD formated NTFS with files on.

details here http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
Click to expand...

might have to give that a go...last time I checked reading/writing to NTFS partitions was a real no no, there were apps out that supposedly wrote to NTFS but were unrealiable. Must admit I've not looked into it for a while.
 
kfridge said:
just noticed where you are from...bonnie Colne! Used to live there, and then just down the road in Foulridge...had to move over the border into Yorkshire a few years ago :(
Click to expand...

Unlucky... :(

I used to work in Foulridge, Westons. :(
Now im at Rolls at Barlick. :)

As for NTFS, ive not had that issue, ive only got a 32gb FAT32 drive for Windows, I would recommend MacDrive, which lets you read and write the OSX volumes under windows and ive been using it for several month without issue.
 
My new Macpro has arrived. :)

Left to right,

Macpro 8-core, Dell2407-HC, 17"Macbook Pro, Dell 2405, Dell 2407, Macpro 4core hiding behind the 24"iMac...



I need to sort my cables out now... but im going to wait until ive got everything where i want it before I start tidying up. :)
 
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