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I'm looking to make the jump from PC to Mac but am having some difficulty choosing my dream machine! I'm a keen amateur photographer and will be using CS4 and Lightroom concurrently, usually with 2-3 images open at 16bit colour depth. I do a little video work (mainly AV slideshows) which requires some rendering ability if I don't want to be waiting 5yrs for a DVD!
I was originally looking at a Apple refurbed iMac (2.93Mhz) which lies within my budget of £1300 but found a company that sold older refurbished Mac Pros, specifically the 2.66MHz Quad Core version (based on the 51xx series Xeon). Now although this is now a few years old and a relatively dated design, it should still hold it's own quite comfortably against the new boys on the block according to the guy at MacKing. It's exactly the same price as the refurbed iMac.
So, I'm having difficulty deciding between the two and was wondering if anyone with more experience in this area could help.
In the iMac's favour:
1. Lots of photogs use them and seem very happy
2. Tidy! No big box to worry about
3. I get a nice new monitor thrown in (current model a 17" 7yr old Iiyama so it's a big improvement)
4. Brand new machine with full 1yr warranty
Against iMac:
1. Adding hard drives involves external daisy chained FW800 units for scratch disc use so guess an extra £200 for another couple of drives
2. No user servicable parts (aside from RAM)
3. Read some worrying reports about screen brightness issues which my Huey Pro won't sort out - I'd like monitor calibration to be fully automatic rather than having to find a work around
4. RAM upgrades hideously expensive at present (only two SO-DIMM slots so 4Gb sticks needed - ouch!!)
For the Mac Pro:
1. Quad core and wider memory bandwith. Snow Leopard will only improve matters
2. Can scavenge drives for backup and scratch from existing PC
3. Can upgrade graphics card if required
4. *May* be able to upgrade processors later (although at Xeon prices a new machine may be cheaper!)
5. Can choose my own monitor -> matt finish and no problems with brightness calibration
Against the Mac Pro:
1. Older machine and no information available on real world performance vs modern iMac that I can find
2. Only has a 90 day RTB warranty (although can extend to 6mths for another £70)
3. Will need to upgrade monitor eventually
4. Bulky
5. No idea what lifespan I can reasonably expect considering the machine is at least 2-3yrs old already
So..... what d'ya think?
I was originally looking at a Apple refurbed iMac (2.93Mhz) which lies within my budget of £1300 but found a company that sold older refurbished Mac Pros, specifically the 2.66MHz Quad Core version (based on the 51xx series Xeon). Now although this is now a few years old and a relatively dated design, it should still hold it's own quite comfortably against the new boys on the block according to the guy at MacKing. It's exactly the same price as the refurbed iMac.
So, I'm having difficulty deciding between the two and was wondering if anyone with more experience in this area could help.
In the iMac's favour:
1. Lots of photogs use them and seem very happy
2. Tidy! No big box to worry about
3. I get a nice new monitor thrown in (current model a 17" 7yr old Iiyama so it's a big improvement)
4. Brand new machine with full 1yr warranty
Against iMac:
1. Adding hard drives involves external daisy chained FW800 units for scratch disc use so guess an extra £200 for another couple of drives
2. No user servicable parts (aside from RAM)
3. Read some worrying reports about screen brightness issues which my Huey Pro won't sort out - I'd like monitor calibration to be fully automatic rather than having to find a work around
4. RAM upgrades hideously expensive at present (only two SO-DIMM slots so 4Gb sticks needed - ouch!!)
For the Mac Pro:
1. Quad core and wider memory bandwith. Snow Leopard will only improve matters
2. Can scavenge drives for backup and scratch from existing PC
3. Can upgrade graphics card if required
4. *May* be able to upgrade processors later (although at Xeon prices a new machine may be cheaper!)
5. Can choose my own monitor -> matt finish and no problems with brightness calibration
Against the Mac Pro:
1. Older machine and no information available on real world performance vs modern iMac that I can find
2. Only has a 90 day RTB warranty (although can extend to 6mths for another £70)
3. Will need to upgrade monitor eventually
4. Bulky
5. No idea what lifespan I can reasonably expect considering the machine is at least 2-3yrs old already
So..... what d'ya think?