[Hinson]

Hi all...

First, I know this is a little long, but it's bulletized, and if you just read the numbered points, that's probably enough for a response.

I'm in the market for a new Mac and looking for advice or (hopefully) useful info. Here's the main points of my issue

(1) I'm pretty much locked into a Mac Pro
- I need expansion slots (I have a fast eSATA 4-drive enclosure--very sweet)
- I sometime do some intense (but non-professional) video editing and programming.
(2) I'm not made of money
- I know, who is. For me it's the needs of my lovely family that come first.
- I know, this point seems to fight my previous point
- Still, my last 2 Macs were towers, so I find a way to afford what I want
- One secret to doing this: I keep my Macs for about 5 or so years between upgrades!
(3) I keep my Macs for about 5 years between upgrades
- Yes, I just made this point in a sub-bullet, but it deserves its own point
- This means I _cannot_ afford a machine that is obsolete in a year
- This means that timing my purchase is very very important to me!
- This means I do NOT agree with "don't worry about timing, get what you want now."
- My current Mac (dual G5 2.5 Ghz) is almost 5 years old
- I got it around Aug 2004--about 2 years before the Intel Mac Pro came out
- It's been great, but I knew the switch to Intel would eventually catch up to me.
(4) Switching to an Intel machine now has near-term advantages.
- My HD video camera is AVCHD--'nuff said
- Snow Leopard--'nuff said
- Yes, I'll actually do some Windows work at home now
* Side note: I think .Net, C#, and Visual Studio give MS an edge for writing code
* That fact irks me to no end


So, this brings the following questions to mind:

(1) Is there ANY reason to wait longer for a Mac Pro?
- What is the road-map for the next big thing from Intel?
- Will a Mac Pro speed boost and/or price-reduction happen this year???
- Will a major next-generation leap happen within the next year or two?
(2) Should I go for the single processor quad-core or the DP 8-core?
- I've read that most software doesn't take optimal advantage of the extra cores.
- I've read that for this reason, the 4-core 2.66 is almost better than the 8-core 2.26.
- Is Apple's latest technology going to change that?
- If I have the Mac for 4 or 6 years, will the extra 4 cores be worth the extra $700?
* note: Using the education pricing

Thank you very much for anyone who takes the time to reply!


-Jay

[mduell]

1) No, now is a good time to buy a Mac Pro; they were just updated a few months ago.
- The next major update from Intel for workstations (Gulftown) is 9-12 months away and isn't a huge update (6 cores, meh).
- Apple could do a price drop and/or clockrate tweak at any time (like they just did with the MacBook Pros), but those are unpredictable IMO.
- About 2 years until the next new architecture (Sandy Bridge) from Intel.
2) Single socket. There are certainly some apps that can use 8 cores effectively, but Grand Central isn't going to be the magic Apple is playing it up as.
- Switch to a ~2.5 year replacement cycle. Between the time value of money and improved resale values, you can spend about 65% every 2.5 years of what you can spend every 5 years.

I would suggest against buying the previous generation Mac Pro; the memory is expensive and the memory standard is deprecated so the prices aren't doing to drop much.

The current base model is $2149 for a refurb. Upgrade to 4x2GB for about $150 (less whatever you can get for the 3x1GB it comes with); you can go to 16GB in a year or so when the price of 4GB modules craters. Reuse your (e)SATA drives.

[Hinson]

Thanks much for the advice, mduell. I like your approach.

-Jay