Looking to buy a MAC - Some HELP PLzzz...

C

CrimsonVerbs

New Member
I am not a cheap-o I just have been using a pc for so long and I am a flash designer so for me, it works. For image processing, etc. I have no idea...

I am wondering tho.... What you think will be ample enough for my wife, she is a photographer... Money is no object and she shoots ALOT she has 2 cameras both that have 50 megabyte files per image sometimes....

we where looking at the Mac Pro.... I am thinking if I get one off ebay its around 2000 less than in the store... w/warranty and there are a couple of deals on there... I would like not to spend more than 3,000.00 for the tower itself.... and 500 for the 23inch monitor which I've already found....

what do you think of these deals??

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll....cWAT.m240.lVI
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll....cWAT.m240.lVI
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll....cWAT.m240.lVI

I don't know the difference between quad core and dual core, and really... am I going to see much of a difference?? If any.... I would like to spend less, but if u really think the quad core is imperative I will go with a newer model...

As you can see with the ones I've picked out already, they all have different amounts of hard drive space, ram space, and ghz (also quad and dual)..

I know i'd like to have at LEAST a Terabyte of storage, if not more, the ones listed above seem to have at least that...

As far as memory goes, how much is too much???

Thanks for all your help, again I am a little at a loss for all this stuff because I am a pc user...

Also, do you think it would be better NOT to buy from EBAY and look into buying direct?? Or a refurb?/ Also, can you add more Memory, Hard Drives etc. w/o going through the mac outlet for all your upgrades??

David

____________________________________________

***edit those links up top^^^ are actually all quad-cores

here is another link to a dual core I was looking at earlier but it sold already:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll....cWAT.m240.lVI
 
my advice dont buy a mac, i have used macs and pc's for photo editing, i have personally had better luck with using a pc, for 3k you can get a GREAT pc photo editing set up

now having said that, for this, i would prolly go quad core because that seems to be where the future is, i know that new processors are coming out starting on jan 20- the end of the q1. if you are planning on spending that much money you are going to want something that will not be outdated in 2 months, thats just my .02
 
footballdude2k3 said:
my advice dont buy a mac, i have used macs and pc's for photo editing, i have personally had better luck with using a pc, for 3k you can get a GREAT pc photo editing set up
Click to expand...

For 3k you can't build spec for spec what a Mac Pro is, remember they are quad xeon processors, not core 2 duos.

Anyway, I think this is a double post.
 
tlarkin said:
For 3k you can't build spec for spec what a Mac Pro is, remember they are quad xeon processors, not core 2 duos.

Anyway, I think this is a double post.
Click to expand...

No, it is not, I simply asked YOU the question, now I am involving the whole forum... Would like open reviewing... Also, would others agree with what tlarkin just said about quad xeon vs core 2 duos do I see some room for a re-buttle???
 
To do a quick side by side comparison, even though in my opinion you can't fully compare a Mac to a PC, here goes a Dell with the same Xeon processors versus a Mac Pro

from dell: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=bwcwjzz&s=bsd


Starting Price $2,839
Lease from $76/mo. (48 pmts)*
Learn More Estimate Payments | Apply

Update Price & Ship Date
Discount Details
Preliminary Ship Date: 1/21/20082
Print Summary
My System Details
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5440 (2.83GHz,2X6M L2,1333)
Genuine Windows® XP Professional, SP2 with Media
256MB PCIe x16 nVidia NVS 290, Dual Monitor DVI Capable
1GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (2 DIMMS)
16X DVD-ROM with Cyberlink Power DVD™
C1 All SATA drives, Non-RAID, 1 drive total configuration
80GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst Cache™
No Monitor
My Accessories
USB Entry Quietkey, No Hot Keys
Dell USB 2-Button Mechanical Mouse with Scroll
No Floppy Drive
Internal Chassis Speaker,Dell
My Software
Resource DVD - Contains Diagnostics and Drivers
My Services & Warranties
3 Year Limited Hardware Warranty with Next Business Day On-Site Service
No Onsite System Setup
Also Included
Genuine Windows® XP Sticker
Click to expand...

From Apple: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP...co=7B72365D&node=home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro


Mac Pro
Leopard
Image
Start building your Mac Pro with our suggested configuration:

* Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors
* 2GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
* ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics with 256MB memory
* 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1
* 16x double-layer SuperDrive

Ships: Within 24 hours
Free Shipping
$2,799.00
Click to expand...

Notice the Mac pro actually has better specs and is cheaper. So, you can no longer say that Macs are way over priced.

Here goes a Dell I matched best I could the specs:

tarting Price $3,174
Lease from $84/mo. (48 pmts)*
Learn More Estimate Payments | Apply

Update Price & Ship Date
Discount Details
Preliminary Ship Date: 1/21/20082
Print Summary
My System Details
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5440 (2.83GHz,2X6M L2,1333)
Genuine Windows® XP Professional, SP2 with Media
256MB PCIe x16 nVidia NVS 290, Dual Monitor DVI Capable
2GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (2 DIMMS)
16X DVD+/-RW w/ Cyberlink PowerDVD™ and Roxio Creator™ Dell Ed
C1 All SATA drives, Non-RAID, 1 drive total configuration
320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst Cache™
No Monitor
My Accessories
USB Entry Quietkey, No Hot Keys
Dell USB 2-Button Mechanical Mouse with Scroll
No Floppy Drive
Internal Chassis Speaker,Dell
My Software
Resource DVD - Contains Diagnostics and Drivers
My Services & Warranties
3 Year Limited Hardware Warranty with Next Business Day On-Site Service
No Onsite System Setup
Also Included
Genuine Windows® XP Sticker
Click to expand...

The Dell is over $300 more for almost the same specs. I would also like to note that the dell has a standard warranty of 3 years, which beats the Mac Pro's one year warranty. Add apple care for $300 and the price almost evens out and you get the three year warranty from Apple with one huge exception. Support from Apple is decent, support from Dell sucks. Also, you can add apple care later on as long as there is original warranty left.
 
Last edited:
TLarkin

Tlarkin,

ur talking about dell's i'm talking about custom built pcs....

so far the most I could possibly spend at new egg is 3,000.00 and that is for a custom built core2extreme quad core 3.0ghz with 45nm architecture (something that makes don't have by the way), evga 8800gts, hanns-g 28inch monitor, 2 terabytes of hard drives, and 10 gigs of corsair ram. Now find me the comparison that a mac has similar to that....??

Besides not having viruses which is easily taken care of with a 60.00 version of kaspersky anti-virus... I don't really see the point...
 
CrimsonVerbs said:
Tlarkin,

ur talking about dell's i'm talking about custom built pcs....

so far the most I could possibly spend at new egg is 3,000.00 and that is for a custom built core2extreme quad core 3.0ghz with 45nm architecture (something that makes don't have by the way), evga 8800gts, hanns-g 28inch monitor, 2 terabytes of hard drives, and 10 gigs of corsair ram. Now find me the comparison that a mac has similar to that....??

Besides not having viruses which is easily taken care of with a 60.00 version of kaspersky anti-virus... I don't really see the point...
Click to expand...

i agree, i would not spend 3k on a dell, it would be better imho, to get a custom, very upgradable, and you can select everything down to the brand, with dell, you are getting parts that seem once again imho to be going out of date and its harder to upgrade them, if i had 3k i would spend it on a custom, once again, just my .02
 
CrimsonVerbs said:
Tlarkin,

ur talking about dell's i'm talking about custom built pcs....

so far the most I could possibly spend at new egg is 3,000.00 and that is for a custom built core2extreme quad core 3.0ghz with 45nm architecture (something that makes don't have by the way), evga 8800gts, hanns-g 28inch monitor, 2 terabytes of hard drives, and 10 gigs of corsair ram. Now find me the comparison that a mac has similar to that....??

Besides not having viruses which is easily taken care of with a 60.00 version of kaspersky anti-virus... I don't really see the point...
Click to expand...

You aren't grasping what I am saying, and your build isn't for photo editing its for gaming. First off, I have Xeon processors in my build, which are bigger, badder and more expensive than the core processors. Secondly that video card you listed will do nothing for photo editing, its a gaming card.

Also your build is farce, there is no way you could build that with 10 gigs of RAM and have it cost you 3k and have 2 TB of storage space. You are simply wrong, you provide no links, and ultimately, and I am really trying to say this with out any ego at all, you are plain wrong.

Now, try to build a dual quad-core Xeon machine from scratch and beat the price of the Mac Pro. I am telling you that you can't. You are misinformed and wrong about them being over priced because Macs are actually very competitively priced since the switch to Intel.

Like I stated earlier to the original poster, the Mac Pro is way over kill for most users. It is a serious machine, for someone who needs to do some real serious work on it. All the hollywood movies you see and all the albums you buy from the major record labels are filmed, recorded, produced and finished on mostly Macs. A lot of medical research is done on a Mac. High end graphics, video, audio, medical research, education, and even the military have Macs on their network doing serious work. Its not a play toy like some gaming PC you can assemble off of newegg.
 
pc=personal computer
mostly for messing around on the internet, a little photoshop, gaming, word processing
mac=business computer
high end editing and networking
 
Actually, I work on a pretty nice workstation PC, which is made by dell.
It's setup for design work and light video editing.

The whole PC is for home use and Mac is for work view is a bit twisted.
I think you can get both systems for casual use and for a work environment, you just need to know what your getting. Slapping a gaming card into a custom made computer, isn't really going to make a difference for what their wanting to do. I'm sure you could get by with a nice gaming card.

Here's the card, I have on my work comp.
http://www.shop.com/+-a-Quadro+FX3450+-p56764410-k36-st.shtml
 
tlarkin said:
Like I stated earlier to the original poster, the Mac Pro is way over kill for most users. It is a serious machine, for someone who needs to do some real serious work on it. All the hollywood movies you see and all the albums you buy from the major record labels are filmed, recorded, produced and finished on mostly Macs. A lot of medical research is done on a Mac. High end graphics, video, audio, medical research, education, and even the military have Macs on their network doing serious work. Its not a play toy like some gaming PC you can assemble off of newegg.
Click to expand...

1st off, I get the drift, and as I said what its use is for is for SERIOUS photo editing, my wife works for vogue, bizarre, and the music industry just to name a few... Not spouting off ego, just simply saying yes, it does need to be a SERIOUS machine... The quandary I am having with it is, whenever I go into a mac store and click on the "photoshop" icon on the mac pro it takes around 10-15 seconds longer than a custom built pc does. I like shit to get done FAST it seems the mac in some way, take WAY too long IMO. I click on 3 icons and once to see if it can multi-task it takes another 45 seconds and usually some of those items don't even open and I get errors. They are sloww and hell...

And I am not trying to say I can "BEAT- OUT" a mac,, even tho the build I just gave you from new-egg.com came to 3000.00 that is all I am saying to you, that is with a 28-inch monitor included. I have seen xeon processors on there as well, don't know if they are mac-worthy but they only cost within 3-500 at the most and that is LESS than the processor I used with was 1000... So for you to say thats even comparable is a BIT beyond me...

You say one thing and yet you mean another... You have no way to say that I cannot built a custom built pc that is comparable to a mac at less than mac price... No NOT ebay priced, less than mac. Brand new, custom built.

and as far as I am concerned mac (apple) are trying to be a monopoly and everything they do has always been "Exclusive" to their company, take the iphone for example, with at&t.....
 
Nice Quadro, I used to support a Mac G5 Maya render farm at my old work which they all ran generation 4 quadros at that lab.

To further my point also, compare a Macbook pro to any top of the line PC laptop. Then add in the fact that the MBP is 1" thick and weighs about 6Lbs. Then take into account that it also has, built in bluetooth, 802.11 A/B/G/N wireless, built in firewire digital camera, firewire 800, back lit keyboard, sudden motion sensor, DVI HD output, gigabit ethernet, magnetic ac adapter plug (most genius idea ever), optical audio out/in, and a card slot.

Not to mention out of the box it can edit video, record audio, master audio, author a DVD, organize and edit photos, record video with its built in camera, etc.

So, really considering all the built in out of the box features you get with a Mac and considering the security and the stability and the performance I would say they are very fairly priced.

The sad thing is, most people don't know what they are talking about and think that a top of the line Nvidia gaming card like the 8800GTS will actually help with photo editing. Photo editing is mostly pure processing power from your CPU. The quadros, which are horrible gaming cards, and work station cards which have GPUs designed to render heavy 3D graphics. You go to Pixar and you won't find 8800s in their machines, you will find Quadros.
 
CrimsonVerbs said:
1st off, I get the drift, and as I said what its use is for is for SERIOUS photo editing, my wife works for vogue, bizarre, and the music industry just to name a few... Not spouting off ego, just simply saying yes, it does need to be a SERIOUS machine... The quandary I am having with it is, whenever I go into a mac store and click on the "photoshop" icon on the mac pro it takes around 10-15 seconds longer than a custom built pc does. I like shit to get done FAST it seems the mac in some way, take WAY too long IMO. I click on 3 icons and once to see if it can multi-task it takes another 45 seconds and usually some of those items don't even open and I get errors. They are sloww and hell...
Click to expand...

thats cool it sounds like your wife has a really cool job. Also, don't take any publically used computer as an example of what your machine will run like. I can't tell you how many users I see per a week that have totally trashed their mac because they have no idea what they are doing. It will run slow, their prefs are corrupted, whatever the case may be. Its very easy to fix most of these problems, the thing is, it is not windows. You must be willing to learn something new. Once you learn it, you begin to understand how much better Linux/Unix based OSes really are compared to MS. Also, depending on what version of Photoshop it was (if its CS2, its a PPC application and has to run under rosetta) and depending on how much RAM that display model had depends on how it runs. Also, with vista, it kind of cheats and preloads applications into memory, which is one reason why vista is such a resource hog. All my Macs run lightning fast. I have an old dual G4 500 running Tiger, and it boots up to the desktop in a matter of seconds and I can launch a web browser and be on the net with in 30 to 40 seconds of powering the machine on. This is coming from a machine that is most likely 7 years old.

I can explain further why this is, the mac is a closed platform. meaning you get less third party options, but the plus side is that there is much greater quality control. When you have 100s of developers making software for an OS it is hard to control quality, when you only have a hand full it is way easier. That is why the Mac platform is known for reliability.

And I am not trying to say I can "BEAT- OUT" a mac,, even tho the build I just gave you from new-egg.com came to 3000.00 that is all I am saying to you, that is with a 28-inch monitor included. I have seen xeon processors on there as well, don't know if they are mac-worthy but they only cost within 3-500 at the most and that is LESS than the processor I used with was 1000... So for you to say thats even comparable is a BIT beyond me...
Click to expand...

The thing is, you aren't comparing the right hardware, you aren't listening to what I am saying. That is all. You are listing an Intel Core processor which is consumer based and is built for multimedia and consumer usage. Gaming, video play back, audio play back, office productivity, etc. Basic usage is what it is designed for. Xeons are in heavy work load workstations and servers. They are the big bad boy intel processors. The Mac Pro comes standard with Xeon processors, they don't make a Core processor Mac Pro. So, your build would be more comparable to an iMac which is more similar spec'd than a Mac Pro.

You say one thing and yet you mean another... You have no way to say that I cannot built a custom built pc that is comparable to a mac at less than mac price... No NOT ebay priced, less than mac. Brand new, custom built.
Click to expand...

I used to think this exact way, and got into a debate on a Mac forum about this very topic. I was told if I can prove you can build a similar spec machine to a Mac pro cheaper than Apple, post it. I couldn't do it. I tried, and I failed. Also, I say what I mean, and I think for the most part I have been very clear. What is it you are confused about what I am talking about?

and as far as I am concerned mac (apple) are trying to be a monopoly and everything they do has always been "Exclusive" to their company, take the iphone for example, with at&t.....
Click to expand...

HAHAHA, oh and Microsoft, Symantec, Autodesk, Google, and McCafee aren't?

Its a closed platform man, just like a Sun Spark station, or SGI work station. Where as MS is an open platform and they don't develop hardware, they just allow any manufacturer to build hardware for their OS. Which is why they got so big so fast, everyone could build and engineer for it, where as every other platform out there was a closed market. The plus side is you get quantities of software and hardware options, the negative side is quantity does not equal quality. There are 100s or maybe 1000s of crappy applications and hardware for a PC. There really aren't any crappy products for a Mac. There are way less, but they are mostly quality items.

Also, I am not trying to start a fight over the internet at all. I am just giving you free advice which you can take as you want. I have worked with macs/windows/novell/Linux/Unix for several years now. I do know some what of what I am talking about, and I am just trying to inform you. You can build a PC if you wish, but if its for business I would say don't. It is up to you and its your money and I could care less how you spend it. I typically charge for consulting people but take breaks from work and browse the net when I need to take 5 or 10 minutes off from a project that is annoying hard or I am stuck on. So this helps clear my head.
 
Last edited:
Mac is the way to go if you want stability, reliability, and power all bundled into one nice white-smooth looking computer. Great for video editing since the OS is graphics based. they edited transformers on 3 macbook pro's for example.
 
Shadowhunter said:
In this thread: defensive mac/apple fanboys :P
Click to expand...

I am hardly a fan boy, I just like setting facts straight. I hate every OS almost equally, with the exception of windows vista, I just hate that OS plain and simple.

Apple is not with out its faults, but when someone says they can build a Mac Pro for half the cost or a lot cheaper is false, you can't. Trust me I have tried.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top