Do I Buy a New Mac Pro
When you join the Apple Developer Connection (ADC) you get one hardware discount asset. This asset has to be used during the 1 year your membership is valid or you loose it. In the UK this hardware discount gets you 20% off pro level equipment. With my current ADC membership running out at the end of January I have been trying to decide if I should buy a Mac Pro. Today the decision has got more complicated as Apple has upgraded the Mac Pro range.
The entry level machine now specs out at:
Two 2.8ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” Processors, yes thats 8 cores on the base model.
2GB Memory, ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB GDDR3, 320GB 7200 RPM HD , Superdrive.
Bluetooth is now built in as standard but wireless is still an optional extra at £30.
The new base configuration is £50 more than it used to be but thats still quite an upgrade for £50.
So at £1749 (£1488.51 + VAT) its still a pretty expensive machine but the ADC discount would bring it down to about £1399 (£1190.81 + VAT).
Do I really need a Mac Pro, well No. I have a Mac Book Pro which does everything I need. Its a bit slow mixing down podcasts and I very slow at rendering the final output of my video podcasts but do these two matters justify a new machine. Then again when has a techie ever needed to justify a new machine.
I am going to at least wait and see what’s announced at Mac World next week before making any decisions but it is really quite tempting.
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