[X4U] Re: Expandable Mac's (Holy shit! Here comes an S!)

[Zane H. Healy]

At 1:33 PM +0000 1/21/08, Stroller wrote:
>On 20 Jan 2008, at 18:11, Zane H. Healy wrote:
>
>I like good-quality computers, I can't bring 
>myself to buy a machine without PCI slots or 
>enough space for a second hard-drive or extra 
>RAM. I won't buy a machine with a built-in 
>monitor on the principle that I already have two 
>perfectly good monitors here. I am probably only 
>just in the class of people

I really don't care that much about the PCI slot 
issue, I don't have any cards in my G5, if I did 
add something it would be an eSATA card.  I 
decided to go FireWire for my audio interface 
when I learned that my Darla24 wouldn't work in 
my G4/450 AGP (it had been in my 8500/180).  I do 
care about the RAM, I will not run a desktop with 
a built in monitor, and I'm drooling over the 
thought of a Mac with 4 HD bays.

>for whom an iMac seems a little inadequate - I'd 
>love an Intel Mac on my desktop and my G5 is 
>starting to feel a little slow for just one or 
>two activities, but the price of a MacPro is 
>prohibitive and I can live with my G5 for the 
>present.

I'm curious as to which apps.  I do know the 
latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader is quite 
sluggish.  I'm still using 6.0.2 Professional. 
IIRC, the Dreamweaver CS3 demo I tried was 
sluggish as well.  I find Adobe Lightroom to work 
quite nicely on my G5 2x2, though iPhoto has 
gotten very sluggish.  I think these are the 
extent of my complaints.  My G4/450 after 4 years 
was almost unusable it was so slow, same with the 
8500/180 after 2-3.

>If you order a MacPro you don't HAVE to have 2 x 
>quad-cores. There's a build-to-order option that 
>allows you to elect only a single quad-core 
>processor and - here in the UK - it shaves about 
>£300 off the price. This brings the MacPro into 
>the realms of affordable, about what I've paid 
>for Power Macs in the past, when the cheaper 
>options have been available.

True, but I prefer mid-range, for extending the 
life of the machine past 3 years.  Though any 
MacPro is likely to be very usable after 3+ 
years.  When the time comes to upgrade, I very 
likely will go with the low-end model this time, 
and spend the extra on more RAM (from a 3rd 
party, not Apple).

>>  OTOH, I need plenty of disk space, and more 
>>than 4Gb RAM. Basically I need a Sun Ultra 24 
>>running Mac OS X.
>>http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra24/index.xml
>
>That is a very appealing price & specification. 
>I've never really used Sun, but it looks like 
>they've hit a sweet spot for Unix workstations.

If I hadn't switched to Mac OS X for most of my 
Unix needs, I'd have ordered one the second I 
knew they were offering it.  I really want one to 
replace my SunBlade 1000 (2x600Mhz Ultra III's), 
as my current system generates so much heat I 
have to limit how much I use it.

Zane



-- 
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet)           | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
|     Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing,    |
|          PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum.         |
|                http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/               |