Back in July, Apple released the App store, and allowed a torrent of useful, and not so useful apps to take up residence on our iPod’s and iPhones. The developers have had time to work most of the kinks out, so I think now’s a good time to do a fair review of some of them.
Over at Tom’s Hardware, they’ve posted a very interesting article, showing that a Mac Pro is indeed at a competitive price with an equivalent PC.
Keep in mind, this wasn’t priced out at the “very expensive computer parts store”, it was done at newegg, which is pretty much the cheapest place around for parts (At the consumer level.)
What is the cost difference you say? $200? Naa, think lower. $100? Still to high? Yep. Give up? Thought so. The actual retail price is… a whopping difference of $5.67! If you can’t afford that, well, maybe you shouldn’t be buying a $2800 machine.
So, about a month ago I finally ditched my PC. Now I’m using OS X on all my main machines.
Specifications - 8 core 2.8ghz, 6gb 800mhz DDR2 RAM, 320gb hard drive, ATI 2600XT
Moving from a 1.6ghz core 2 duo running XP, to a cores running at 2.8ghz is like night and day. Leopard takes advantage of the cores much better then my previous Windows computer does, with all 8 cores being used regularily.
Having 6gb of memory is a treat. I used to regularily come within 20mb of using all 2gb with Photoshop open, but not anymore. It runs insanely fast, completing operations that took over a minute on my PC in under 10 seconds.
As well, the thing is whisper quiet. It’s only a touch louder than my Macbook.When walking into the room, the only way you can tell it’s on is by looking at the tiny white light on the front. The only downside is my room gets really, really hot at night, due to the 8 cores. Although, for some reason, it’s not as bad as my old P4 desktop.
Another thing that blows me away is the design of the Mac Pro’s case. Everything has it’s place, and you cannot see a single wire. The memory was really easy to install, due to the removeable risers. As well, the 1/8th inch aluminun makes it really really studry. It must weigh twice as much as my old machine.
Finally, it looks like upgrading the pro in the future is going to be extremely easy. The harddrives simply slip into bays in the side, no cables required. The videocard pops right out, but with no cables in the way it makes things much easier. The cards that the RAM are on pop out, allowing you to insert RAM in a proper static-free environment.
Overall, this is an amazing machine, in both speed and design. I hope it gives me many years of reliable service in the future.
Now to decide what to do with my old machine… PVR? Media Server? Hmm…
Oh, by the way, you can catch some pictures of the unboxing, and the insides right here.
