New Mac Pro or 24" iMac

[TangoJuliet]

I have been waiting on apple to update the mac pro desktop with more ram, a better video card for a while now. I sold my desktop months ago because I was fed up with PCs and wanted to switch to apple.

I currently have a 37" Westinghouse which i had connected to my PC and wanted to hook that up to the mac pro but i been talking with my wife and think we should replace the 30" sony crt hdtv in the living room with the westy and put the imac in the office.

Are there any pros/cons to doing this? How is the new C2D Extreme imac rate? Can i put 2 hdds in the imac or should i just get a external drive to hook it up to.

edit: I'm probably going to wait until October when they upgrade to Leopard and possibly have a price cut or newer CPU

 

[TheStu]

Well, what exactly are you wanting to do with the machine? For pretty much everything taht an average person does, the Mac Pro is not just over the top.... it is down right ri-donk-ulous.

You cannot put a second hard drive into the iMac (well, not easily) and you will want an external for TimeMachine anyway.

 

[TangoJuliet]

Originally posted by: TheStu
Well, what exactly are you wanting to do with the machine? For pretty much everything taht an average person does, the Mac Pro is not just over the top.... it is down right ri-donk-ulous.

You cannot put a second hard drive into the iMac (well, not easily) and you will want an external for TimeMachine anyway.

Well, its going to do the usual web surfing, itunes listening, office stuff as well as possibly some video editing. I am probably going to dual boot it with XP as I think Leopard will have boot camp built into it.

Ok, I have 2 500GB hdds laying around...can I just buy an external case and hook it up or should I buy a WD My Book external drive?

 

[TheStu]

So long as the enclosure is compatible with your drives it should work just fine. I know that i pretty much just ordered a random one off NewEgg, and it works great with OS X. I would recommend trying to get a Firewire enclosure since that is faster than USB (I know, USB 2 is 480Mb/s v FW400 is 400Mb/s, but FW runs at that speed, USB 2's speed is burst rated, so worse for long transfers) and you need the USB for other things like... well pretty much everything else these days.

From my understanding, the Leopard discs will have BootCamp drivers on them, and it will have BootCamp pre-installed on the system.

Unless you absolutely have to dualboot (gaming, memory hungry apps, CAD) I would say that you might want to just get VMWare Fusion or Parallels. That will let you run Windows within OS X.

Also, hold off on installing Windows... you may find excellent alternatives for what you would normally use Windows for, and then you have wasted time installing it.

 

[TangoJuliet]

Originally posted by: TheStu
So long as the enclosure is compatible with your drives it should work just fine. I know that i pretty much just ordered a random one off NewEgg, and it works great with OS X. I would recommend trying to get a Firewire enclosure since that is faster than USB (I know, USB 2 is 480Mb/s v FW400 is 400Mb/s, but FW runs at that speed, USB 2's speed is burst rated, so worse for long transfers) and you need the USB for other things like... well pretty much everything else these days.

From my understanding, the Leopard discs will have BootCamp drivers on them, and it will have BootCamp pre-installed on the system.

Unless you absolutely have to dualboot (gaming, memory hungry apps, CAD) I would say that you might want to just get VMWare Fusion or Parallels. That will let you run Windows within OS X.

Also, hold off on installing Windows... you may find excellent alternatives for what you would normally use Windows for, and then you have wasted time installing it.

cool, thanks for the tips. is there any downside to getting the imac? review-wise how are they doing?

 

[TheStu]

It looks like they are not significantly faster than their older versions, but have some nice benefits, such as the new keyboard, the new look, and I believe a slightly nicer screen. As well as cheaper overall.

 

[Kaido]

I would recommend the following:

1. Buy an iMac in October when Leopard comes out
2. Buy an Airport Extreme wireless router from Apple
3. Get a couple USB cases and connect them to the Airport Extreme for Time Machine

The iMac is much, much less expensive than a Mac Pro plus you get very good performance in a very compact device. The Airport Extreme has 802.11n, so if you want to use the iMac wirelessly you will still have really good network speed. In addition, the Airport Extreme lets you hook up external USB hard drives to act as network hard drives called "Airport Disks". You can use the Time Machine feature in Leopard to automatically back up your Mac to the Airport Disk. No messy devices or cables on your desk plus zero-hassle backup. Also, if you are willing to spend your Mac Pro budget on an iMac, you can get a pretty mean machine - the default high-end 2.8ghz configuration is $2300, add in 4 gigs of aftermarket ram and you've got the same $2500 pricetag of a Mac Pro plus a 24" screen and 500gb hard drive. I would also recommend getting AppleCare for the iMac - if anything goes wrong, it's an all-in-one machine like a laptop and can't be worked on at home as easily as a Mac Pro could.

 

[TheStu]

Kaido pretty much has it. Also, not to call you an idiot or liar, but where did you see about being able to use Airport Discs for Time Machine? My roommate and I are talking about doing exactly that, but also how well does TimeMachine handle multiple machines writing to the same disc?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: TheStu
Kaido pretty much has it. Also, not to call you an idiot or liar, but where did you see about being able to use Airport Discs for Time Machine? My roommate and I are talking about doing exactly that, but also how well does TimeMachine handle multiple machines writing to the same disc?

Airport Disks support creating user-specific accounts (think of it like FTP - you can section off different folders for different users). As far as being able to use Airport Disks with Leopard, it's right on the Leopard's Time Machine page:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/le...tures/timemachine.html

Effortless meets wireless.

With a hard disk connected to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, AirPort all the Macs in your house can use Time Machine to back up wirelessly. Simply select your AirPort Disk as the backup disk for each computer and the whole family can enjoy the benefits of Time Machine.

As far as setup goes, the Airport Extreme page lays out the basics:

http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/sharing.html

A simple-to-use AirPort Disk Utility gives you more setup options. You could set the disk to become available whenever you connect to the network. You could set up password-protected accounts for everybody on the network, or allow read-only access to certain files and folders. The choice is yours.

This feature alone makes Leopard and the Airport Extreme router more than worth the asking price. Zero-hassle backup, zero clutter on your desktop, combined with OS X and Mac styling. What more could you ask for?

 

[TheStu]

Wow, i missed that everytime i looked at the Time Machine page. I had the Leopard beta for a while, and after the 9a500n update Time Machine finally worked... and boy that right there is an excellent backup utility. Totally complete, you can restore from it when reformatting (or so I hear) and it runs auto-magically and very well.

It's like I was telling my friend the other night... nothing in Leopard is really a killer app IMO, but it is the combination of all of them that seems to make it great.

 

[TangoJuliet]

Cool, thanks for the reply. Yeah I was looking at getting the 2.8 C2D Extreme iMac along with the Apple Care. I was thinking the 2gb would be fine...do you really think 4gb isnt overkill?

I am going to wait until October and Leopard...I believe I stated that in the 1st post. Hopefully there is a price cut on the high end iMac too. I have about $2400-2500 to spend on the setup. I also have a student developer account with Apple and get an even better discount then the student discount.

Also, you recommend getting the airport extreme and connecting the usb cases to it. Can the cases connect via FW to the router or is it USB only? I currently have a Linksys wireless router....which the iMac would be hard wired to and my wife's notebook which is wireless. You would recomend dumping the Linksys for the Apple router because you can connect the external drives to it?

Also, I was planning on taking my 150GB Raptor and (2) 500 GBs drive and intall that into the Pro but since I am not getting it anymore should I just sell all of those and get some sort of 1TB external drive?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: TheStu
Wow, i missed that everytime i looked at the Time Machine page. I had the Leopard beta for a while, and after the 9a500n update Time Machine finally worked... and boy that right there is an excellent backup utility. Totally complete, you can restore from it when reformatting (or so I hear) and it runs auto-magically and very well.

It's like I was telling my friend the other night... nothing in Leopard is really a killer app IMO, but it is the combination of all of them that seems to make it great.

Yup, nothing major has changed, rather it's just the combination of little things that will make it attractive. I do my own backups using a combination of iBackup, SuperDuper, and Mozy, but Time Machine is just a great hands-off approach to effortless backup - PLUS you can restore it easy! Backing up is usually pretty simple; restoring is not so easy. Being able to go in and drag-and-drop the file you want out of the backup system is simply awesome. I know my wife will love it, and if it supports full cloning then I'll be using it as my primary backup too

 

[TheStu]

Well, I can tell you that you can use Time Machine to fully back up your system, including the Library and other System Files... so although it isn't quite like a clone of the drive, it will get everything.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: alkohoLiK
Cool, thanks for the reply. Yeah I was looking at getting the 2.8 C2D Extreme iMac along with the Apple Care. I was thinking the 2gb would be fine...do you really think 4gb isnt overkill?

I am going to wait until October and Leopard...I believe I stated that in the 1st post. Hopefully there is a price cut on the high end iMac too. I have about $2400-2500 to spend on the setup. I also have a student developer account with Apple and get an even better discount then the student discount.

Also, you recommend getting the airport extreme and connecting the usb cases to it. Can the cases connect via FW to the router or is it USB only? I currently have a Linksys wireless router....which the iMac would be hard wired to and my wife's notebook which is wireless. You would recomend dumping the Linksys for the Apple router because you can connect the external drives to it?

Also, I was planning on taking my 150GB Raptor and (2) 500 GBs drive and intall that into the Pro but since I am not getting it anymore should I just sell all of those and get some sort of 1TB external drive?

The Airport Extreme only has USB ports unfortunately, but the advantage to that is you can also hook up a printer to it. So you can use the Airport Extreme for NAS, printer serving, 802.11n wireless, and gigabit ethernet... not too bad considering the price IMO. If it was me, i would keep the 2 500s, and hook them up with a USB hub into the Extreme. i don't really trust the 1TB drives yet... all drives fail, and if that one does, that is 1TB of stuff gone... so even if it is more expensive I will stick with using 2 500GB drives (no RAID) for storage. That way I don't lose all my stuff.

Based on what you say you use the system for, I don't think that you will need the 4GB of RAM, or even the C2E really... I mean, if you have the money to burn, then by all means, it is your money. I just wouldn't go that route (ok, maybe i would, man... imagine how fast a movie rip would be rool

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: alkohoLiK
Cool, thanks for the reply. Yeah I was looking at getting the 2.8 C2D Extreme iMac along with the Apple Care. I was thinking the 2gb would be fine...do you really think 4gb isnt overkill?

I am going to wait until October and Leopard...I believe I stated that in the 1st post. Hopefully there is a price cut on the high end iMac too. I have about $2400-2500 to spend on the setup. I also have a student developer account with Apple and get an even better discount then the student discount.

Also, you recommend getting the airport extreme and connecting the usb cases to it. Can the cases connect via FW to the router or is it USB only? I currently have a Linksys wireless router....which the iMac would be hard wired to and my wife's notebook which is wireless. You would recomend dumping the Linksys for the Apple router because you can connect the external drives to it?

Also, I was planning on taking my 150GB Raptor and (2) 500 GBs drive and intall that into the Pro but since I am not getting it anymore should I just sell all of those and get some sort of 1TB external drive?

imo, you can never have enough ram Right now you can get 4 gigs for like $250 shipped, which is a really awesome price (not to mention tons cheaper than Apple, who charges $700). I know it's not necessary on Tiger (which flies on 2gb), but between Leopard and future apps that you might use, why not take advantage of the cheaper price? It's a great way to future proof your iMac! Also, if you ever want to use a virtualization app like Parallels or VMware to run Windows (or Linux) you will most definitely want the extra ram!

Yes, I would recommend getting an Airport Extreme and connecting USB cases to it. You can only use USB cases with it; Firewire won't work. However, since your iMac will be hardwired you can just attach the USB cases straight to your iMac and use them for Time Machine backup if you want. Then share them on the network if your wife wants to backup her laptop to them. Oh, and the Airport Extreme also allows you to attach USB Printers for networking print sharing as well. So your options really come down to how much you care about having a clean desk. If you want a clean desk, get an Airport Extreme and toss your USB drives on it - you and your wife can both access them, nothing to gunk up your desk with. If you don't really care, stick with the Linksys (which are great btw) and just connect the USB drives straight to your iMac. Again you can setup network folder sharing on your iMac so your wife can backup to them as well. Personally I like the clean look - less distractions, less things to trip over or fumble with, etc.

Yeah, I'd recommend selling your multiple drives and consolidating them into a single 1TB drive. That is what I am planning on doing when I start switching my family members over to Mac - Airport Extreme + 1TB Airport Disk + iMacs = dirt-simple setup for both them and me. Plus most enclosures don't like the high amounts of heat the Raptors put out. If you are planning on hooking your USB drives up directly to your iMac, then just keep both of your 500gb drives and put them in RAID via software.

 

[TangoJuliet]

I just did a quick order and got this

24" iMac 2.8ghz C2D Extreme 2gb, original config
Apple Care
Free 4GB ipod Nano (after rebate)
Airport Extreme w/ Gigabit

~2500 + tax

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: TheStu
Well, I can tell you that you can use Time Machine to fully back up your system, including the Library and other System Files... so although it isn't quite like a clone of the drive, it will get everything.

See, that's what I really like about SuperDuper - I have a 200gb 7200rpm 2.5" drive in my 15" MacBook Pro, then a 250gb 5400rpm 2.5" drive in an external enclosure. I do incremental clones using SuperDuper nightly from the internal drive to the external drive, which runs off bus power. That way I always have a fully-bootable backup with me.

 

[Kaido]

Also you might want to pick up an AppleTV - that way you can rip movies on your iMac using Handbrake and then stream them via iTunes to your Sony or Westy in the TV room

 

[TangoJuliet]

I forgot to mention that I have a wifi HP Printer. So its not really necessary that I connect it to the Extreme because its wireless already (built in wireless-b).

I wont go with apple tv just yet. I have a HD DVR which serves its purpose...I dont spend all that much time watching movies.

Is the airport extreme easy to configure for file sharing programs such as utorrent?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: alkohoLiK
I forgot to mention that I have a wifi HP Printer. So its not really necessary that I connect it to the Extreme because its wireless already (built in wireless-b).

I wont go with apple tv just yet. I have a HD DVR which serves its purpose...I dont spend all that much time watching movies.

Is the airport extreme easy to configure for file sharing programs such as utorrent?

Well for your situation - wired iMac, wifi printer - I would just stick with the Linksys, which is a quality router, and put your two 500gb drives in RAID 1 (Mirroring). Here's a quickie guide on Apple's site:

http://docs.info.apple.com/art...y/10.5/en/duh1013.html

Or you do striping or concatenated if you prefer. Now that I understand a bit better about your setup I'd just skip the Airport Express.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: alkohoLiK
I just did a quick order and got this

24" iMac 2.8ghz C2D Extreme 2gb, original config
Apple Care
Free 4GB ipod Nano (after rebate)
Airport Extreme w/ Gigabit

~2500 + tax

:thumbsup:

You're gonna love it.

 

[randomlinh]

anyone tested the NAS portion of the apple airport extreme under heavy load? I've been reading bits and pieces that it seems to choke a lot for that.

Also, I'd recommend slapping the printer on the airport extreme anyway, and turn off the wifi. why? Because then you can set the airport to 5ghz only N, and taht will maximize range and speed. Altho, I guess this would also depend on anyone else/devices in the household

 

[Pabster]

I've been running it pretty hard the last month or so, no problems.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Pabster
I've been running it pretty hard the last month or so, no problems.

Have you (or anyone else) noticed a longer range for B/G signals, presuming you're running in B/G only or N on 2.4ghz w/ compatibility

 

[TangoJuliet]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: alkohoLiK
I forgot to mention that I have a wifi HP Printer. So its not really necessary that I connect it to the Extreme because its wireless already (built in wireless-b).

I wont go with apple tv just yet. I have a HD DVR which serves its purpose...I dont spend all that much time watching movies.

Is the airport extreme easy to configure for file sharing programs such as utorrent?

Well for your situation - wired iMac, wifi printer - I would just stick with the Linksys, which is a quality router, and put your two 500gb drives in RAID 1 (Mirroring). Here's a quickie guide on Apple's site:

http://docs.info.apple.com/art...y/10.5/en/duh1013.html

Or you do striping or concatenated if you prefer. Now that I understand a bit better about your setup I'd just skip the Airport Express.

How would I go about putting the 2 external drives in RAID? Do enclosures support 2 hard drives? The linksys router has been working great for the past 3 years or so. I could just connect the enclosure to the iMac via FW.