[I WAS the One]

Isn't it too big?
I think it's a backward step making it too big.
and looks cheap.
I don't know, what do you think?

[AssassyN]

Well it'll never please everybody, but it's truly huge compared to the G4 towers of the past.

[GeoMac]

it's not that big. Only a few inches taler than the G4, and that's mostly because of the handles. and it's definitely not cheap. The G4 cases, while pretty, looked cheap. The G5 definitely looks classy...and expensive (and it it!)

[KidRed]

Cheap? What, did you see the G5 in a newsprint ad or something? Just the layout on the side with the clear case shows that exact opposite. That time, money and extremely clever design and planning went into the G5. It is tall, but that's a trade off I can accept.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by I WAS the One:
Isn't it too big?
I think it's a backward step making it too big.
and looks cheap.
I don't know, what do you think?

I thought it was beautiful. It didn't look that big to me, and I thought it was very sophisticated looking. Definitely the best-looking desktop Apple has ever made (except maybe the 17" LCD iMac). It didn't look that big to me at all.

[Cipher13]

It's huge.

And, yet... two hard drives... one optical drive.

Sigh.

I don't care how good it looks, to be honest.

[booboo]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
It's huge.

I don't care how good it looks, to be honest.

Oh come on!

It's always an added bonus that the next 3 years of PC design will be ill-conceived, cheap 'n' nasty (but superficially similar) versions of Apple's latest designs...

[neilw]

I can't imagine thinking that it looks cheap. If anything, it looks *expensive*. Certainly the case must contribute many more dollars to the cost of the G5 than the typical PC beige box. I think it's beautiful, and the insides are perhaps the most impressive of any electronic product I've seen.

That being said, it's way too big given the amount of internal expandability. The airflow design is very impressive in terms of it's noise performance, but it seems to have led to very poor space utilization inside the case (especially for single-proc machines.) If you're gonna make it that big, ya *gotta* put in room for more drives.

But I'd still happily take one.

[rhogue islander]

The fit and finish are first rate, nothing cheap about it.

As far as looks go, its the inside that gets me excited. I'd run it with the cover off.

The outside is a little too boxy, slabsided and plain for my tastes. All that perforated metal makes me think of NOMAD from the original Star Trek series. Maybe it will hover around the office sterilizing inferior PC lifeforms.

I can think of Lian Li aluminum PC cases with sexier lines.

I loved the El Capitan case for its translucency and unboxiness.

[AssassyN]

Cipher's right in a way...yeah, it make look cool, but Apple look steps backwards in ways that actually count more than looks, noteable functionality. 2 Hard drives? On a "Pro" machine? "ONE" optical drive? Welcome back to 1993 or something. Of course, to the average joe like me those facts would be easier to get over than the moviemaker Bob, however a great deal of Apple's tiny marketshare are those type professionals. It's just weird to buy a new computer in 2003 in which you have to insert the disc, let it read, then take it out and insert a blank disc all to copy one CD.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
I don't care how good it looks, to be honest.

We know, we have seen your room

[himself]

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
...Definitely the best-looking desktop Apple has ever made (except maybe the 17" LCD iMac). It didn't look that big to me at all.

I'd say the G4 Cube was the best looking desktop of all time. That being said, the G5 is an extreme departure from the direction Apple set with the cube. It's Aluminum, has no transparent parts (not including the inner plastic cover), and it's big. I like the aluminum and the overall look of the G5 a lot. I don't mind the fact that it is a huge gray monster either. It's just really unexpected at a time when Apple has been working towards miniaturizing everything (iPod, Cube, thin and small laptops, eMac, even the iMac is relatively tiny). Expandability is also disappointing, but most folks could easily work around those issues if they need to.

[Link]

You people remind me of the common complaints that existed back in the days when 286s started coming with hard drives:

"but it only has one floppy drive! How am I going to copy disks now?!"

Besides that the G5's motherboard is enormous. I'm sure when they can get the size of it down they'll add another set of bays to the case

[osxisfun]

It's just weird to buy a new computer in 2003 in which you have to insert the disc, let it read, then take it out and insert a blank disc all to copy one CD


Firewire.

And bravo to apple for not forcing those of us that never copy cds like to be subjected to yet another fan inside the machine...

Bob buys external firewire drives.

Bob burns DVDs from files he creates in dvd studio pro.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
It's huge.

And, yet... two hard drives... one optical drive.

Sigh.

I don't care how good it looks, to be honest.

I don't feel like it's too big after seeing it in person. However, I do agree that it's unfortunate that they reduced the expandability when they increased the size. If it were larger but could still accommodate two optical drives and four internal hard drives, I suspect nobody would complain.

Looking at a 1.6 at CompUSA, I saw lots of potential to regain some internal space in a future release and add support for more drives.

I do care to some extent, if I have a choice, about aesthetics. The G5's case is functional as well as nice looking -- swapping out hard drives is MUCH easier than older machines (no screws), and putting in RAM is on par with the G4 (which along with the B&W and the 7500 was one of the easiest machines to add RAM ever).

[zigzag]

Everything involves trade-offs. You want quiet and cool, you need a bigger box. You want a smaller box or more drives, you get hot and noisy. Life is unfair.

As for looks, it's a very minimalist, utilitarian, machine-like design, so I can see why some might think that it's "cheap-looking" even though its fit and finish is extremely high. I like it (I even like the back better than the front), but some people prefer "pretty" to utilitarian.

I don't understand people who say it's a departure from the PowerBook - seems to me to be well in line with the PowerBook's minimalist, machine-like aesthetic.

[eggman]

Originally posted by zigzag:
Everything involves trade-offs. You want quiet and cool, you need a bigger box. You want a smaller box or more drives, you get hot and noisy. Life is unfair.

I'm glad you posted this. It's precisely the point I wanted to make.

After hearing endless pissing-and-moaning about how loud the MDD systems were Apple decided to try to make a system that was quiet. And it's also as expandable as get-out... externally.

And, yes... the case is big. I think it looks good, in a kind of polished retro-tech way.

I look at it and think "Gort".

[milhous]

had they made the tower a few inches taller, people could easily fit 4 drives in it. are the drives mounted on sliderails? good idea if they are.

[TheTraveller]

I saw a 1.6 in person, too. Nope, it didn't seem too big. Bigger, but not too big. Quiet, too.

[slipjack]

The poster who said it looked cheap probably needs things like multi-colored blinking lights and big knobs to get thier money's worth.

Seriously, this design is Freakin Awesome. Yes, only having one optical drive bay is a minor annoyance, but there is this thing called Firewire...

Also, How can 2x120 GB internal drives not be enough space? If so, you are doing some SERIOUS video editing and probably should buy a four- or eight- drive RAID array anyway.

Increasing power AND reducing noise? I'm in heaven. I literally tore apart my Dual Ghz to make it quieter... long story but the end result was a quieter machine. (At least I got rid of all the high-pitched whines...)

[osiris]

Originally posted by milhous:
had they made the tower a few inches taller, people could easily fit 4 drives in it. are the drives mounted on sliderails? good idea if they are.

I think the drives are on sliderails/trays...
all the other space is consumed by a giant heatsink. Too bad there wasn't room for a third drive, or even an XServe style hot-swapable drive bay in front ... that would be nice.

[Cadaver]

When my dual 2.0GHz G5 is delivered, the first thing I plan to do is make it go faster by adding some lights inside the case. I could replace a fan or two with some multicolored LED fans, or perhaps add a cold cathode light to the inside. You'd be able to see the lights through the perforations at the front of the case.

Because, we all know computers with lights go faster than computers without

[Greasyboy]

Also, How can 2x120 GB internal drives not be enough space? If so, you are doing some SERIOUS video editing and probably should buy a four- or eight- drive RAID array anyway.

[/B]

You mean 2X250....which Apple offers. What's funny is that not too long ago people HAD to use multiple hard drives, becuase they maxed out at 80 or 120 GB. Now it's 250 - this is a pretty reasonable amount of space. Plus, Firewire 2 gets rid of a lot of the rendering slowness of keeping your footage on an external drive.

[chrisutley]

Originally posted by I WAS the One:
Isn't it too big?
I think it's a backward step making it too big.
and looks cheap.
I don't know, what do you think?

Did I miss something? Is the G5 trying to win a beauty contest?

Great review!

[freakboy2]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
When my dual 2.0GHz G5 is delivered, the first thing I plan to do is make it go faster by adding some lights inside the case. I could replace a fan or two with some multicolored LED fans, or perhaps add a cold cathode light to the inside. You'd be able to see the lights through the perforations at the front of the case.

Because, we all know computers with lights go faster than computers without

lmao :-)

yeah my pc goes wicked fast now that it has a blue LED fan in the power supply. And the power that comes out of that thing GLOWS BLUE?!!

how cool is that?!

fb2

[I WAS the One]

Originally posted by chrisutley:
Did I miss something? Is the G5 trying to win a beauty contest?

Great review!

First of all, I did saw it. It was on display on COMP USA, and second, I am not talking about a beauty contest either, I refer to the fact that technology improv becoming smaller in size and bigger in brain, and to be honest I play a while with that G5 and believe me I upload a pic of 4megapixel and upgrade it to 600dpi and then I skew it a littler to the left, and guess what? it was like the G5 freeze or something, HELLO? it was a .tif file I was working back home in my g4 MDD.... and BTW the mdd case is better looking than the G5, and yes it looks cheap!.. the MDD have more class. It is the same impact I have when I saw the new G3 b/w near the beige one, the old G3 was ugly! but the b/w was U-G-L-Y (with capital letters) do you feel me? I am really disappointed.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by I WAS the One:
do you feel me? I am really disappointed.

Sorry, I don't "feel" you. That was quite a stream of consciousness there. Not sure what the whole skewed tiff thing was all about.

I personally didn't like the look of the MDD at all. It reminded me of those modded Toyota RSXs with giant off-color plastic air dams and spoilers. The G5 by contrast is a Porsche Carrera GT -- fast, sleek, and beautiful.

[drmcnutt]

Originally posted by booboo:
Oh come on!

It's always an added bonus that the next 3 years of PC design will be ill-conceived, cheap 'n' nasty (but superficially similar) versions of Apple's latest designs...

Unfortunately there's nothing too innovative about the G5's cooling scheme except for the timed fan array (let's see how well that holds up over the years). Otherwise they spaced everything out and left a lot out for the amount of real estate this big machine takes up. Firewire, a MORE expensive option for storage, adds more to your machine cost. Two X 250 sounds like a lot, but who can say in three years? I remember 10 Gigs sounding like a lot a few years back, but now?.

All I can say for the apologists is that Apple needs to do something truly innovative (read different) regarding cooling this chip if anyone will see a portable G5 Powerbook. Hope they can get that accomplished.

DRM

[kiwibabe]

I saw 4 G5's yesterday a 1.6GHz, two 1.8GHzand a pre-production 2GHz. Apple New Zealand had a road show starting where I live and we got to see and play with them

Anyway they were quiet, well-built, pretty and fast. My hubby says I can have one for xmas which made it more exciting yesterday cause I knew I would be getting one in the not to distant future.

[Gilsch2]

The G5s are awesome. They're taller but slimmer than the butt ugly (compared to the aliminum G5) G4s.

I think Apple made the G5s bigger, cooling aside, because these machines were designed to "have legs". Quads anyone?

I have not heard ONE of my pro friends complain about just having 2 internal drives. A combined 500GB of storage is a lot for most pro-wannabees. Real pros use external storage for portability and piece of mind. Your work doesn't "die" if your system dies.

[chrisutley]

If you don't like the way it looks, rip the guts out and stick them in a big giant yellow PC case. Good luck with the cooling! Better yet just buy a PC in a giant yellow case, you can probably get some neon lights for it too.

As for your extensive tests at CompUSA, while it sounds like you know what you are doing I don't think I'll be making any purchase decsions on your findings.

[Keda]

After reading this thread, I stopped through the Apple Store at Tysons to see the G5. Well, it is big, but it looks spectacular. There was a G4 sitting a few spots down. With the clear plastics and curves, the older Mac looked like a toy compared w/the G5.

Yeah, it is big, but the G5 looks like it means business.

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by booboo:
Oh come on!

It's always an added bonus that the next 3 years of PC design will be ill-conceived, cheap 'n' nasty (but superficially similar) versions of Apple's latest designs...

I don't CARE how my system looks; only how well it WORKS.

Computers are tools.

Hell, I could make a PC case that looked better than the G5 case anyway.

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
I do care to some extent, if I have a choice, about aesthetics. The G5's case is functional as well as nice looking -- swapping out hard drives is MUCH easier than older machines (no screws), and putting in RAM is on par with the G4 (which along with the B&W and the 7500 was one of the easiest machines to add RAM ever).

If I have a choice, sure. However, I would rather the ugliest box in the world, with two optical drive bays, than the prettiest, with only one.

No real tradeoff is worth some good looks, IMO.

Originally posted by zigzag:
Everything involves trade-offs. You want quiet and cool, you need a bigger box. You want a smaller box or more drives, you get hot and noisy. Life is unfair.

Bigger = more expansion. Not so, with this. I mean, really...

Originally posted by zigzag:
As for looks, it's a very minimalist, utilitarian, machine-like design, so I can see why some might think that it's "cheap-looking" even though its fit and finish is extremely high. I like it (I even like the back better than the front), but some people prefer "pretty" to utilitarian.

I don't understand people who say it's a departure from the PowerBook - seems to me to be well in line with the PowerBook's minimalist, machine-like aesthetic.

Well, I like how it looks. I don't consider the size a problem either. Just the complete and total lack of expansion, given the size, which is beyond pathetic.

Originally posted by slipjack:
The poster who said it looked cheap probably needs things like multi-colored blinking lights and big knobs to get thier money's worth.

Seriously, this design is Freakin Awesome. Yes, only having one optical drive bay is a minor annoyance, but there is this thing called Firewire...

Also, How can 2x120 GB internal drives not be enough space? If so, you are doing some SERIOUS video editing and probably should buy a four- or eight- drive RAID array anyway.

Increasing power AND reducing noise? I'm in heaven. I literally tore apart my Dual Ghz to make it quieter... long story but the end result was a quieter machine. (At least I got rid of all the high-pitched whines...)

Minor annoyance? Major, for me.

FireWire? Heh, uh, yeah. That's a pretty goddamn poor excuse.

2 x 120 is nowhere near enough space. I would fill that in a week, doing video stuff; without a problem. I would rather have 4 x 60 than 2 x 120 mind you, so your argument is arbitrarily flawed.

Originally posted by Gilsch2:
The G5s are awesome. They're taller but slimmer than the butt ugly (compared to the aliminum G5) G4s.

I think Apple made the G5s bigger, cooling aside, because these machines were designed to "have legs". Quads anyone?

I have not heard ONE of my pro friends complain about just having 2 internal drives. A combined 500GB of storage is a lot for most pro-wannabees. Real pros use external storage for portability and piece of mind. Your work doesn't "die" if your system dies.

"Real pro"? Please, define a "real pro". What is a "real pro"?

External storage is a pain in the ass. I always choose internal, where possible.

I'd like to know what your "real pro's" have to say.

[icruise]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
However, I would rather the ugliest box in the world, with two optical drive bays, than the prettiest, with only one.

No real tradeoff is worth some good looks, IMO.

I seriously doubt that the designers were faced with choosing between looks and expandability. I don't see how the refined design of the G5 makes it any less expandable -- I think if anything it's the cooling system (which they designed to handle 3Ghz+ processors) that dictated many of the design choices.

Beyond that, building an ugly box was never a possibility for Apple.

Minor annoyance? Major, for me.

FireWire? Heh, uh, yeah. That's a pretty goddamn poor excuse.

2 x 120 is nowhere near enough space. I would fill that in a week, doing video stuff; without a problem. I would rather have 4 x 60 than 2 x 120 mind you, so your argument is arbitrarily flawed.

Except of course that it's not a max of 2 x 120, but of 2 x 250, and as hard disk capacities increase, so will this amount. The systems made just a little while ago may have been able to have more internal drives, but the drives' capacity was lower, making it actually a similar amount of total space. Sure, having more space is better, but it's not the dire situation some are making it out to be.

[nvaughan3]

Don't mind the looks of it..but my feelings are that since it bigger they should have at least not crippled the internal expansion capability as much as they did. TWO hard drives? ONE optical drive? No thanks.

[Cadaver]

Perhaps, and this is mere speculation on my part as my G5 has not yet been delivered, Apple felt the G5s (particularly the dual processor models) put out too much heat to have more that two hard drives inside the case. More hard drives = more heat as well, and perhaps they thought this would overload the cooling system as it is presently designed (for quietness).

I suppose a second optical drive would have been possible, since they don't put out much heat in comparison. BUT, maybe Apple took a survey and looked at how many people put a second optical drive into their MDD PowerMacs. I bet it's a fairly small number. Low enough that perhaps Apple didn't feel the cost of designing the case around two opticals was worth it.

Again, this is nothing more than idle speculation on my part.

Personally, one optical bay doesn't bother me. Even if there was an option for a second, I probably wouldn't buy one. I don't duplicate disks enough to make it worth while. As for internal hard drives... since the speed-limiting factor is the mechanical drive itself, and not the interface, an external FireWire 800 case would still provide more bandwidth than could be used by any HD mechanism today.

The main drawback of the current case design is the inability to install two more HDs for internal PCI (PCI-X) based RAID. But again, it could be a heat issue. I mean, man, look at the size of the heat sinks on the G5 processors. An external SCSI RAID would be a solution... though more costly (but potentially much, much faster).

[I WAS the One]

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
Sorry, I don't "feel" you. That was quite a stream of consciousness there. Not sure what the whole skewed tiff thing was all about.

I personally didn't like the look of the MDD at all. It reminded me of those modded Toyota RSXs with giant off-color plastic air dams and spoilers. The G5 by contrast is a Porsche Carrera GT -- fast, sleek, and beautiful.

LOL

great answer! hands down.

(I want a G5,but it is ugly)

[I WAS the One]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
Perhaps, and this is mere speculation on my part as my G5 has not yet been delivered, Apple felt the G5s (particularly the dual processor models) put out too much heat to have more that two hard drives inside the case. More hard drives = more heat as well, and perhaps they thought this would overload the cooling system as it is presently designed (for quietness).

I suppose a second optical drive would have been possible, since they don't put out much heat in comparison. BUT, maybe Apple took a survey and looked at how many people put a second optical drive into their MDD PowerMacs. I bet it's a fairly small number. Low enough that perhaps Apple didn't feel the cost of designing the case around two opticals was worth it.

Again, this is nothing more than idle speculation on my part.

Personally, one optical bay doesn't bother me. Even if there was an option for a second, I probably wouldn't buy one. I don't duplicate disks enough to make it worth while. As for internal hard drives... since the speed-limiting factor is the mechanical drive itself, and not the interface, an external FireWire 800 case would still provide more bandwidth than could be used by any HD mechanism today.

The main drawback of the current case design is the inability to install two more HDs for internal PCI (PCI-X) based RAID. But again, it could be a heat issue. I mean, man, look at the size of the heat sinks on the G5 processors. An external SCSI RAID would be a solution... though more costly (but potentially much, much faster).

Well, about configurations...
I have an MDD, with 4 HD (x120 each)
Max RAM, upgraded graphic card (ATI 128mb) and two cd-rws of 52x52x52

and I am a common Mac user. see?

[zigzag]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Bigger = more expansion. Not so, with this. I mean, really...

This thing runs really hot. Therefore, in this instance bigger = more processing power while running cool and quiet, not bigger = more expansion. If it doesn't meet your needs, you have every right to say you don't like the result, I'm just saying that the design trade-offs don't appear to have been arbitrary, i.e. "let's make a bigger enclosure but limit expansion for no particular reason."

Personally, I prefer cool and quiet to having more drives, so I can live with the result, but I only speak for myself.

They could've made the enclosure still bigger, but I've already heard people complaining that they can't fit the thing under their desks.

Anyway, I agree with you that more internal expansion is desirable, but at the same time I accept the trade-offs they had to make in order to get more processing power in there without having it burn up or sound like a 747 on take-off.

[nvaughan3]

Originally posted by zigzag:
This thing runs really hot. Therefore, in this instance bigger = more processing power while running cool and quiet, not bigger = more expansion. If it doesn't meet your needs, you have every right to say you don't like the result, I'm just saying that the design trade-offs don't appear to have been arbitrary, i.e. "let's make a bigger enclosure but limit expansion for no particular reason."

Personally, I prefer cool and quiet to having more drives, so I can live with the result, but I only speak for myself.

They could've made the enclosure still bigger, but I've already heard people complaining that they can't fit the thing under their desks.

Anyway, I agree with you that more internal expansion is desirable, but at the same time I accept the trade-offs they had to make in order to get more processing power in there without having it burn up or sound like a 747 on take-off.

I understand what you are saying, but at the price point it's selling at, if the goddamm thing produces SO much heat that internal cooling takes precedence over functionality in a professional level machine, lets go watercooling. Quieter, less space, more reliable, and would allow more expansion.

[Eug]

1) As it is, the G5 is extremely tall. It will just barely fit under some desks. I betcha Apple wanted space for 1 more optical drive and 1-2 more hard disks, but in the end decided the drawbacks outweighed the benefits, especially considering that Firewire 800 is faster than the fastest SATA drive in existence. You don't lose significant performance by going to an external IDE Firewire 800 drive. It does cost more, but OTOH, you also gain flexibility. ie. Internal SATA is the best for many people, but external Firewire 800 is a pretty good compromise.

2) Looks are important, but also overall design is very important. The G5 not only looks good, but it's beautifully designed. Not even the best designed clone boxes (ugly or not) come anywhere near the G5's design.

3) Water cooling on a consumer machine is plain stupid, even if that consumer is a graphics pro.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Hell, I could make a PC case that looked better than the G5 case anyway.

Ok, put your money where your mouth is. Go do it, and show us. You might even get a story on Slashdot.

I would rather the ugliest box in the world, with two optical drive bays, than the prettiest, with only one.

That's fine, and you have already said that several times. The G5 is not a viable computer for your needs.

It is, however, viable for everyone I know. I have friends who do high-end digital video for a living. They use Fibre Channel RAIDs to store their terabytes of video and don't care about internal storage beyond swap space. The 8GB of RAM is a lot more important to them than "only" 500GB of internal storage.

I have other friends who are professional graphic artists designing billboards and other print media that result in 1GB+ Photoshop files. The RAM is a bonus to them as well, and the storage is a non-issue (500GB is plenty, and they have nightly tape backups).

I'm a professional programmer working on enterprise java applications accessing/creating/modifying databases with several billion rows in some of the production tables (cell phone call records for the last 7 years). The G5 will be a great development platform for my needs, running JBuilder, Eclipse, Oracle, Sybase, and WebLogic.

The G5 has plenty of speed, storage, and capacity for all of these needs. If it doesn't fit your needs and some PC out there does, then go get one. As you said, computers are tools. Get the right tool for the job and stop bitching.

[clarkgoble]

Just a guess, but I suspect Apple wants to keep the basic form factor of the G5s through the next few iterations. There is a lot of evidence that Apple is wisely moving towards a more PC oriented product changeover. (i.e. change processors, add technology when it becoems available rather than quarterly)

If this is so then the G5 case probably has to scale up to at least the dual 3.0 GHz G5's that are expected late next spring.

So perhaps for your 1.6 G5 the case is overkill and your pissed about limited internal expansion. But think of your dual 2.5 or equivalent.

The big failing is that right now there aren't the high speed firewire 800 hard drives. And some people don't want external drives. (This is, I believe, only an issue for video editors where external firewire 400 drives cause problems)

BTW - something I don't know. In the single CPU G5s can one "hack" it so that an extra HD could be added?

[zigzag]

Originally posted by nvaughan3:
I understand what you are saying, but at the price point it's selling at, if the goddamm thing produces SO much heat that internal cooling takes precedence over functionality in a professional level machine, lets go watercooling. Quieter, less space, more reliable, and would allow more expansion.

I thought of that (maybe Apple's working on it) but it seems to me that a water-cooled system would be even more price-prohibitive, and I'm not sure that it would be any more compact or reliable. You'd need radiators, some kind of circulating motor, you'd still need fans, you'd still have to cool the other components, extra weight, complicated engineering, seals and fluids - do we really need all that just to fit an extra drive or two in a machine that can already hold 500 GB and has 3 Firewire ports and ethernet? I would say probably not.

[SalBaker]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
"Real pro"? Please, define a "real pro". What is a "real pro"?

External storage is a pain in the ass. I always choose internal, where possible.

I'd like to know what your "real pro's" have to say.

Well, we have over 30 Avid Media Composers used for editing long-form broadcast and cable documentaries. Our programs have won dozens of national EMMYs, Peabody Awards and Oscar nominations. I don't know if we are "real" enough, but we are pros.

All our Avids are on Macs, and not a single one uses internal storage for media. The idea of that would be a joke.

How do you manage to keep uncompressed and/or hundreds of hours of off-line res video for multiple and ever-changing clients and producers on internal drives, even if you have 4? Is this something that only "real" pros have to worry about?

[Gilsch2]

SalBaker...you sound pretty proffessional to me..lol I get the feeling we're arguing with a 15 year old who's p*ssed because his PC gamer friends are making fun of the poor "crippled" G5 with only 2 internal drives.

LIke I said earlier, all the pros that I know use external storage. It would be ridiculous and careless of them not to.


Cypher: go ahead and design a "better looking" case than Apple. Try to keep the blinking and neon lights to a minimum though.

[osxisfun]

Dang BMW!

I went to home depot today and could not fit half the stuff i bought into my 325i.

That's it I am selling my G5 and buying a Ford Exploder.

[I WAS the One]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
Dang BMW!

I went to home depot today and could not fit half the stuff i bought into my 325i.

That's it I am selling my G5 and buying a Ford Exploder.

HA!

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Icruise:
I seriously doubt that the designers were faced with choosing between looks and expandability. I don't see how the refined design of the G5 makes it any less expandable -- I think if anything it's the cooling system (which they designed to handle 3Ghz+ processors) that dictated many of the design choices.

Beyond that, building an ugly box was never a possibility for Apple.

It doesn't matter; the fact of the matter is the machine has jack all expandability, which is a Very Bad Thing�.

Originally posted by Icruise:
Except of course that it's not a max of 2 x 120, but of 2 x 250, and as hard disk capacities increase, so will this amount. The systems made just a little while ago may have been able to have more internal drives, but the drives' capacity was lower, making it actually a similar amount of total space. Sure, having more space is better, but it's not the dire situation some are making it out to be.

2 x 250, so? Same problem; and, again, I'd rather have 4 drives totallying 500 GB than 2 drives totalling 500 GB.

I, for one, do find it a terrible situation. Adding another hard drive, when capacities increase, will require removing one. THAT is not a good thing.

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Eug:
3) Water cooling on a consumer machine is plain stupid, even if that consumer is a graphics pro.

Why is it ridiculous? I doubt you have any good reason for this

Originally posted by nvaughan3:
I understand what you are saying, but at the price point it's selling at, if the goddamm thing produces SO much heat that internal cooling takes precedence over functionality in a professional level machine, lets go watercooling. Quieter, less space, more reliable, and would allow more expansion.

Originally posted by zigzag:
This thing runs really hot. Therefore, in this instance bigger = more processing power while running cool and quiet, not bigger = more expansion. If it doesn't meet your needs, you have every right to say you don't like the result, I'm just saying that the design trade-offs don't appear to have been arbitrary, i.e. "let's make a bigger enclosure but limit expansion for no particular reason."

Personally, I prefer cool and quiet to having more drives, so I can live with the result, but I only speak for myself.

They could've made the enclosure still bigger, but I've already heard people complaining that they can't fit the thing under their desks.

Anyway, I agree with you that more internal expansion is desirable, but at the same time I accept the trade-offs they had to make in order to get more processing power in there without having it burn up or sound like a 747 on take-off.

Yeah, I have no doubt they didn't LIKE leaving out the drive bays; but the thing is, they did.

To me, and many others, that is unforgiveable.

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
Ok, put your money where your mouth is. Go do it, and show us. You might even get a story on Slashdot.



That's fine, and you have already said that several times. The G5 is not a viable computer for your needs.

It is, however, viable for everyone I know. I have friends who do high-end digital video for a living. They use Fibre Channel RAIDs to store their terabytes of video and don't care about internal storage beyond swap space. The 8GB of RAM is a lot more important to them than "only" 500GB of internal storage.

I have other friends who are professional graphic artists designing billboards and other print media that result in 1GB+ Photoshop files. The RAM is a bonus to them as well, and the storage is a non-issue (500GB is plenty, and they have nightly tape backups).

I'm a professional programmer working on enterprise java applications accessing/creating/modifying databases with several billion rows in some of the production tables (cell phone call records for the last 7 years). The G5 will be a great development platform for my needs, running JBuilder, Eclipse, Oracle, Sybase, and WebLogic.

The G5 has plenty of speed, storage, and capacity for all of these needs. If it doesn't fit your needs and some PC out there does, then go get one. As you said, computers are tools. Get the right tool for the job and stop bitching.

Gimme Apples R&D budget and I will.

Hell, okay, I shall without it. Not a problem.

Well, I'm not gonna go out and buy a fibre channel RAID. The performance is unnecessary, and the cost prohibitive, in a single-user environment, wouldn't you say? Thereby making the G5 unsatisfactory.

Maybe with your setup the machines matter less than what they're connected to; but for a vast majority of people, that isn't so.

Originally posted by SalBaker:
Well, we have over 30 Avid Media Composers used for editing long-form broadcast and cable documentaries. Our programs have won dozens of national EMMYs, Peabody Awards and Oscar nominations. I don't know if we are "real" enough, but we are pros.

All our Avids are on Macs, and not a single one uses internal storage for media. The idea of that would be a joke.

How do you manage to keep uncompressed and/or hundreds of hours of off-line res video for multiple and ever-changing clients and producers on internal drives, even if you have 4? Is this something that only "real" pros have to worry about?

Uh, since when are internal drives for archiving? Where, on earth, did I mention that? Doing a full-scale film project on its own would eat up that 500 GB of space. Never did I mention archiving.

Nice try.

Originally posted by Gilsch2:
SalBaker...you sound pretty proffessional to me..lol I get the feeling we're arguing with a 15 year old who's p*ssed because his PC gamer friends are making fun of the poor "crippled" G5 with only 2 internal drives.

LIke I said earlier, all the pros that I know use external storage. It would be ridiculous and careless of them not to.


Cypher: go ahead and design a "better looking" case than Apple. Try to keep the blinking and neon lights to a minimum though.

Yeah, a fifteen year old who wants more UV lights. Sure. If that makes you feel better.