 "Mac Pro MA356LL - Still Astounding!" | 2008-06-17 |
| - Reviewed By User: A23QU283QFK74F |
After using this Mac Pro for a few months now having come over from the PC world, here's my initial impressions:
First and foremost, it's a BARGAIN! There's no way I could build a PC to these specs for the price I paid for this last-years model Quad-core Xeon. Please don't think about comparing it to a Core2Quad system.... it isn't one. This is a professional-class heavy duty Workstation, and if you don't know the difference, you probably won't buy one.
To keep the price low, Apple gives us only 1GB memory, a smaller Hard Drive and a relatively weak Video Card. These are easily upgraded when convenient. I've got 8GB iRAM, 4 HDDs and a hand-me-down ATI HD2600 from a 2008 8-core in mine.
Leopard has been easy to learn and very stable for me. It's not as pretty as Vista, but is far more useful and secure. Fortunately, my video editing software has a Mac version that runs well on Leopard.
Boot Camp works well for me with one exception: Windows only seems to work with the front-panel Audio Port, completely ignoring any speakers plugged into the rear port.. Windows itself runs flawlessly and very fast.
Physically, the Mac Pro is a work of ART! The case is well-finished, the internal cabling is extremely tidy and well-thought out, the Hard Drive Caddies are flawless, everything runs cool and extremely quiet. The system is virtually SILENT in any normal room.
On the technical side, the Mac Pro uses the newer EFI system instead of the antiquated (mid 80's) BIOS that most PCs use. The end result is more stability, faster boot up, shut down and sleep operations.
If you are looking for a powerful, well made, silent and well thought-out system that should last a long time, buy one of these or one of the new 8-core Mac Pros. If you absolutely must have Windows, this system runs it extremely well, though I use it less and less as I learn Leopard.
Have Fun,
Keri |
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| "Mac Pro 266 GHz" | 2008-03-27 |
| - Reviewed By kgraenicher |
| I love it, very fast easy to up-grade hard drives and ram and is fairly priced! |
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| "Switching from PC to Mac was my best move EVER in computing" | 2008-03-19 |
| - Reviewed By terids |
No more CTRL>ALT>DELETE! Far less worry over rampant viruses. Power, power, power! Plus, no complaining that all applications don't work on a MAC. With the inexpensive Parallels software, you can run both Windows and Mac applications AT THE SAME TIME.
Do I need to say I love my MAC? |
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| "A must of professional digital photographers" | 2008-02-09 |
| - Reviewed By fromybookshelf |
| The Mac Pro has been an essential work horse computer for me as a digital photographer. I've been getting great speed and efficiency from this computer with only a small amount of upgrades. It has increased my workflow and production by at least 40+ percent. I've had it for over a year now and everything smoothly. It's pretty quiet, seriously easy to upgrade in terms of memory, hard drives, graphic cards, and has plenty of ports for various USB and FireWire devices. The beauty of being able to add up to four additional hard drives is just awesome. This computer will definitely spoil you. Apple has really outdone itself with the MacPro. |
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| "Fast, Easy to Upgrade and the BEST MAC yet!" | 2007-12-22 |
| - Reviewed By adam71esq |
| I own an MacBook Pro and IMac, and have been an Apple convert for 2 years now. When I switched from Windows I never looked back. When I need a computer that could handle more than my IMac I looked at the Mac Pro on Amazon. I saved about $300 by ordering here and upgraded the computer myself with more Ram and HD (it holds 4!). I love this machine! It is super fast, quiet, upgradeable to 16gb of ram! Do yourself a favor and get this machine if the regular Mac is not enough for you. I use it for video editing and photos as well as my business and it is awesome! |
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| "A good investment" | 2007-11-28 |
| - Reviewed By User: ARPSOUJ1WTG9T |
| I had an intel Imac and loved it but as I got into making music and video, I wanted to invest in a machine that could allow me to continue to do more proccessor intensive stuff. When I first got this machine, I really couldn't tell a difference. Now that I'm doing more demanding stuff, I can definately tell. I love how easy it is to pop in additional hard drives and expand memory. My only complaints are the costs of the dimm chips and that the default configuaration only includes 1gb ram. This is a legitimate beef, but the performance, beauty and construction make up for it. I love this machine! |
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| "The Conversion of a PC Owner" | 2007-10-16 |
| - Reviewed By User: A21BZBIDMO5E87 |
I've owned PC after PC since I was a dorky kid with an electrical engineer for a father. I own a software company which develops products on the Microsoft/PC platform. But after purchasing a PC which began overheating within 3 months of ownership, struggling to find the problem, fumbling about with a poorly designed case trying to work through the maze of cables, I finally indulged in the Mac Pro.
Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it comes with the strange but reliable OSX. But here's the upside:
PROS
- Elegant external and internal design. It's laid out like a well-made server product. No tools are required to do most basic things like swapping a card, drive, or adding RAM. There isn't a cable in sight.
- Intel platform. I'm dual-booting and running both Windows Vista and OSX. I've never seen Vista run so well.
- Performance. This is a fast machine. I'm an avid Photoshop user and the 10+ GHz of processing power shines when editing huge image files.
- Reliability. I attribute partially to OSX, but in hundreds of hours of usage to date I have yet to see a full crash of the system (including when running Vista).
- Highly extensible. Most PCs on the market don't support 16GB of RAM or have 4 PCI Express slots.
CONS
- It IS expensive. I immediately spent another $200 to augment the measly 1GB of RAM provided.
- Video card options... there aren't many. While fully compatible with Microsoft operating systems and applications, compatible hardware is limited. The nVidia 7300GT that is provided works fine for most applications but it certainly isn't high end.
- Dual boot options. Apple Bootcamp (still in beta at the time of this writing) limits you to 32GB partitions for other operating systems. I have to point out that 1) I'm not an expert Apple user, and 2) I know there ARE other options (such as Parallels). But to the casual user this could present difficulties.
I paired the Mac Pro with an Apple 30" Cinema HD display, and it's the best machine I've ever owned, and my favorite one.
Highly recommended. |
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| "The Mac Pro is technological art." | 2007-09-18 |
| - Reviewed By User: A5FO3KL0969TK |
In August 2007, I replaced my four-year-old dual-processor desktop with the 2.66gHz Mac Pro. What an enormous performance gain! I'm so pleased with the computing experience it offers me. It's a very well designed and engineered piece of technology.
I love how easy it is to configure the Mac Pro with additional hard drives and PCI-e cards. I immediately added a second SATA drive for backing up the primary drive. (SuperDuper is an outstanding tool for doing backups.) Later, I added a FirmTek serial-ATA card for external storage.
The standard 1gb of RAM is satisfactory for basic usage -- but I heartily recommend going to at least 3gb. My Mac Pro's responsiveness increased noticeably after I gave it more RAM. Vendors such as Crucial and OWC tend to be reliable sources for Mac memory at good prices.
If you need to run Microsoft Windows or Linux in addition to OS X, VMware or Parallels will do so at near native speed. In fact, colleagues have told me that Windows operating on the Mac Pro feels faster than it does on their conventional PCs.
My only nitpick is that I wish the Mac Pro had more than one Firewire-400 port on its rear panel. Although it ought to be possible to add more Firewire ports with a PCI-e card, so far I haven't found one that works properly with this machine. |
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| "Awesome Machine" | 2007-09-08 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1YQTU9HDVRNPO |
This is probably the most expensive computer I ever spent my hard earned money on...It was worth every cent of it.
This is my first pure Mac desktop. I am loving every second I spend with this computer. As soon as I got the machine, I immediately added 2 more gigs of memory and flashed a PC 1900xt to mac 1900xt so that it'll boot in MacPro which works fine.
I strongly recommend an extra gig or 2 more when you get this system. I bought mine from OCW, great company and their memories are top quality. 1 gig is not enough and does not show justice to this machine, the OSX loves more memory and the more memory you add, the more responsive and instant it becomes.
OS Leopard will make this machine scream since the kernel itself has been optimized for Intel processor and multithreading operations. The scheduler has been redesigned and optimized, so even if you think OS X Tiger is fast on MacPro, you are going to be in awe when running Leopard on it.
This machine while it is so fast and powerful, it is surprisely very quiet. I almost pissed my pants because as soon as I turned on the machine, i did not hear anything. I thought the computer was DOA but imagine my surprise when I turned to my monitor and the OS X desktop was ready for me to start playing with it.
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| "Good machine...Good service from Amazon" | 2007-09-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3D6SM6JC1NN78 |
| I don't need to add to the positive reviews of this computer. It's a great machine. However the first one I received had a faulty logic board which drove me crazy for a couple of weeks. Apple was useless and did not help me with the problem at all. Amazon was wonderful and sent me a replacement overnight with no shipping charges. Thank you Amazon custumer service. |
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