Contemplating the swtich

I am contemplating switching to Mac but first I have a few questions. I am interested in the new Mac Pro workstation and had planned on going with the base 2Ghz CPU and upgrading to the ATI X1900XT video card. I want to know if I am locked into buying hardware upgraded form Apple and if I have to use their LCD monitors. For one I found some nive 19" Viewsonic Widescreen LCD monitors on ebay for $210 a piece which is much cheaper than apples 20" displays. Will they work as long as they are DVI? Also does any standard SATA drive work with the Mac Pro? Same with memory as long as it is FB-DIMM? Thanks in advance for any answers.

Switching to a Mac Pro is a heavy step. What line of work are you in, out of curiosity?

Should work fine. None of the hardware you've mentioned produced only for apple. As long as you find the compatible once changing HW can't be a problem. Same with the display.

You are in no way locked into buying hardware from Apple, in fact I think most people here would probably tell you to get the standard 1Gb of RAM from Apple then purchase the rest elsewhere like Crucial. I would do the same with any hard drives you may want to add. As for displays, it seems to be the resounding opinion of this forum that one should purchase a Dell ultrasharp over a Apple cinema display (LCD manufactured by same company and the Dell is cheaper with more i/o options, just not as stylish) The graphics card is probably the one thing you do want to get from Apple directly because a standard PC graphics card needs to have its bios reflashed to work in a Mac, which I haven't a clue on how to do and not all graphics cards have a Mac version bios available. Any mouse should work fine with any Mac and I'm pretty sure the keyboard comes with the Mac Pro so no worries there.

As far as work right now I manage a resturant, but has a current hobby and future career I am getting into programming. I doubt I need the power of the Mac Pro for anything productive, but I love to game, encode home movies, and program. Its probably overkill but I dont mind spending the money in a month or two and I really hate the all-in-one design of the iMac and I think I would find the Mac Mini to low powered for me.