[markw10]

The situation I have is both me and my wife have a home based business. Each of us has a MBP that we use for both personal and business use. We store a lot of personal files such as office documents, itunes music, and iphoto pictures. Also, for business we have many office documents and other important files. I have wanted to get a desktop Mac which I can use for a backup if one of the MBP's goes down while it's under repair or when we need an extra computer or even computing power. I like the design of the iMac but coming from the PC world I always built my own towers and like the idea that I can do a lot of expansion to the Mac Pro. I just have several questions:

1. The way I am setting it up I want to have it set up for dual use. I plan to put it at my desk but then get a wireless/bluetooth keyboard/mouse. That way I can use it at my desk when needed and when my wife needs it she can. Her desk is just 12 feet away and I think the wireless should work fine at the distance. We plan to get a widescreen monitor for both desks but my question is, how far will a monitor (DVI) cable work. It would be at least 20-25 feet since I'd have to run it along the ceiling and across a door. Also, if I am able to do this what is a good Switchbox I should look at for the monitor?

2. I have a question about the drives. I understand the current Mac Pro works with up to 4 hard drives. I want to dedicate the 1st one as purely for this machine for Mac and Windows, likely 750GB or more. What I want to do beyond that though is set up a server drive to be used from both of the MBP's. if I'm right the Mac Pro can do RAID and would want to have these as mirrored drive. Could I simply get a couple 1TB drives and make it drive 2 and 3 and set them up to do Mirrored RAID? Can I do this with the standard MAC OS X or do I need to get the server edition? Also, does the standard Mac Pro support it or do I need to get a RAID card? Beyond this I want to start using Time Machine from both MBP's. I know I can set up a 4th drive and make it dual partition but I want to use two separate drives so I don't risk losing both time machine backups if a hard drive fails. Also, I want at least 750GB for the Time Machine drive so I plan to get a couple External HD's to simply operate via firewire or USB that can be attached to the Mac Pro.

3. I originally was going to set it up as a Boot Camp machine. The machine this is replacing is a Tower Windows machine. I have tried both Parallels and VMWare in the past but have never settled on either. I am not much of a gamer, I only play Flight Simulator from time to time and other than that other than programs like Quickbooks I don't use Windows a lot. I still want to have that option but with the power of the Mac Pro will I be able to simply use Parallels or VMWare instead of using Boot Camp? Which one is a better option?

4. Power: How much wattage would a computer like this use?

5. The Next Mac Pro: I know many things like memory, hard drive sizes, design, graphics card, etc. may all be unknown for the next mac Pro but what chip is expected to be used in it? Is there a newer Xeon or some other Intel Dual or Quad Core chip?

I know these are a lot of questions and of course we are facing a update. I definitely will wait for the updated Mac Pro but want to make the right purchase decision. I appreciate any help with this.

[dimmer]

1. Bluetooth at "just" 14 feet away may be slightly problematic, depending upon the transmiting radios -- I'd want to check that it works OK to make sure. DVI should work fine up at 25 feet (since 30 foot cables are being sold, which would be pretty pointless otherwise!) Never used a DVI switchbox, hopefully someone else can answer that one.

2. Disk Utility can create software mirrored RAID arrays, no need to but OS X Server for that, or for a hardware RAID card (pretty much wasted on a mirrored array anyway). Using the fourth drive for Time Machine may need some work-arounds, as TimeMachine (as far as I know) is designed primarily to work with local external drives (Firewire or USB) on each system being backed up. It can be hacked to work over a network, but hack doesn't combine well with backup in my mind. I'd suggest using two external drives -- one for each MacBook -- and using those locally.

3. BootCamp vs. Parrallels vs. VMware is pretty much down to what you want to do: if you are OK with running either OS X or Windows at any time, BootCamp works fine. If you must have OS X running at all times, obviously you need to look elsewhere. There are good comparison articles on the three options on the web.

4. No idea!

5. Yes, there's a new Xeon line that was announced recently (late December?), in both dual and quad core versions. If the Mac Pro gets updated, I think we are expecting to see the newer CPU's being part of that.

HtH!

[psionmark]

You'll need Bootcamp for your flight sim stuff. I'm a recent Mac convert and you can read about my experiences using my MacBook Pro with Flight Simulator X here.

If you've got any specific questions, let me know.

Cheers,

Mark

[mduell]

Originally Posted by markw10 

how far will a monitor (DVI) cable work

About 15 feet for 1920x1200, 50 feet for 1280x1024.

Originally Posted by markw10 

5. The Next Mac Pro: I know many things like memory, hard drive sizes, design, graphics card, etc. may all be unknown for the next mac Pro but what chip is expected to be used in it? Is there a newer Xeon or some other Intel Dual or Quad Core chip?

It's all pretty easy to predict with reasonable confidence -
CPU: Dual quad Xeons, 2.5-3Ghz for the base model with upgrade (3.16 or 3.2) and downgrade (somewhere in the 2-2.5 range) options
RAM: 8 or 16 800Mhz DDR2 FB-DIMMs (maybe 667Mhz if availability remains tight)
GPU: If nVidia, GeForce 8400 or 8500 base, with an 8800 upgrade option and a Quadro FX4600 or 5600 for the pros. ATi is a little harder to predict, but probably 2600 base, 3800 series upgrade options, and FireGL 7000 series for the pros.
HDD: Marginal bump over what they're offering now, maybe a high-end SSD option