Apple Mac Pro MA356LL/A Desktop (Two 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processors, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)

Amazon Customer Reviews

(5 out of 5)

Best Mac Ever...And I've Had Several

I've been an Apple addict since the Classic was first introduced and have traveled through the good, great, and struggling years with them. Thus, I feel well-qualified in saying that Apple's new Mac Pro MA356LL is THE best Mac ever made. (Which, by extension, also means the best desktop computer ever made.)

First, it's incredibly fast. When I'm working full tilt, which is often, I'm running Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator, Acrobat, Word, and Final Cut Pro all at once, switching back and forth between programs often and in need of quick results. On this baby, everything flows smoothly and reaction times are instantaneous.

Second, it's resiliently stable. I run an advertising and design agency, so I keep the aforementioned programs running all day, all at the same time, plus iTunes, FileMaker Pro, and Internet programs, off and on. Even on my previous generation Mac G5, every now and then things would get bogged down and I'd have to reboot, then take the time to open everything again, etc., etc. Not even a hint of that on this one, so far. (As of this writing, I've had it about a month.)

Also, while the Mac Pro certainly resembles the G5 in size and casing, this new one has additional ports that make for increased productivity right out of the box. And, yes, you can add plenty more, although I'll probably just go with the factory build for the moment.

Lastly, it's worth noting that although Macs have traditionally cost somewhat more than PCs upfront (although I've always found them to be worth it), in this case, you'd be hard pressed to find a better value than the Mac Pro. Match it function for function and capability for capability with a PC, to the extent that you can, and the PC costs AT LEAST as much, and usually more.

Take this baby out and rev her up. You're in for a great ride.

(5 out of 5)

Misleading review by David Johnson...

What David Johnson forgot to mension was that the Dell has only ONE dual core processor. The Mac Pro has two. That will put you back much more than a lcd, tv tuner and everything else you mensioned. We're talking XEONS! Kind of expensive...
Anyway, compare the other features of the mac pro such as 4 sata hard drive sleds, 8 memory risers, dual gigabit ethernet, dual firewire 800, faster fsb on EACH PROCESSOR...lets not forget that there are not 1, but 2 dual core processors working side by side.
Anyway, before writing such a biased review, please research your topic.

(5 out of 5)

Fabulous machine - but upgrade RAM and HDs yourself; no reason to limit yourself to windows

This is my first Mac - I've been a PC/DOS user for over 20 years. When I took a look at my work needs and the upcoming requirements for Vista, it became clear that I would need to buy an entirely new machine just to upgrade to Vista - that was the last straw for me. Taking a look at Mac, it became clear that the new intel-based machines were a logical choice.

The reasons for my decision:

1. Extremely costly to upgrade to Vista, and I REALLY REALLY did not want to run a first-release WIndows OS based on my previous experiences with Millenium edition and XP. There are also potentially very serious issues with the current availability of regular 32-bit drivers in Vista at this time, let alone for 64-bit. You have absolutely no assurance that when you upgrade that all of your peripherals will work.

2. Recently tried adding a wireless USB mouse to my XP PC, from a major manufacturer. Placing the transmitter dongle in my USB hub resulted in an immediate system crash down to the BIOS level. I was without my computer for 4 days and paid a "PC plumber" $150 to find and solve the problem.

3. Boot camp - this wonderful beta release software allows you to convert your intel Mac to a dual boot XP machine - you have to do a single disc based install of XP SP2, but this is a minor issue. There is a superb tutorial on workarounds at Paul Thurott's web site to help if you need to create a slipstream XP disc containing service pack 2 - this would apply to those of you (like myself) whose original XP install discs are based on SP 1. The practical upshot - you can run your Mac in native XP mode for graphics-intensive programs like Half-Life 2. You'll still need to protect your XP partition in the usual way with respect to anti-spyware and antivirus software, but hopefully you'll do most of your web-based work in OS X anyway. Also note that the upcoming OS X Leopard release this spring will fully incorporate Boot Camp into the OS.

4. Parallels - this software will allow you to run windows apps inside a window inside of OS X using a virtual machine. This software will work very well with software that does not require the full processing power of your graphics card, so it is ideal for non-game apps like Office and quicken. The current Parallels offical release requires a separate install of windows, but beta versions are available which will allow you to run windows from a previously installed boot camp partition. A note of caution - the release candidate versions of Parallels are truly betas - you could have significant problems getting them to work and you could be placing your boot camp partition in jeopardy using them. Nevertheless, it appears that the Parallels team is working VERY hard on getting out an official, stable release that will work from a boot camp partition. I am waiting for this with great anticipation.

5. OS X just works - no muss, no fuss, and it has fewer present security risks as well as highly superior stability compared with XP. As a security aside - it looks as though future versions of Parallels may allow drag-and-drop functionality BETWEEN the windows virtual machine and the OS X desktop - this potentially creates a doorway of vulnerability into the otherwise very secure OS X operating environment. Further discussion of this possible issue can be found on the Parallels support forum, for those of you who are interested.

6. Change for the sake of change: It seems every release of Windows changes the location of many common tasks/operations and often completely changes many menus, and Vista appears to be no exception. We'll all have to learn where to find these all over again. In OS X, the fundamental organization and layout does NOT change from relase to release. Also, the release upgrade cycle in OS X tends to be considerably shorter. Significant enhancements to the OS seem to occur in 12-24 month intervals, historically closer to 12 months. The Longhorn/Vista product cycle was around 5 years.

To sum it up - with the intel-based Mac Pro, you can have your cake and eat it too, playing in windows and working in OS X. You can work in the wonderfully designed, secure and stable OS X environment and also run your indispensable windows apps inside a window inside OS X using the Parallels software. Want games? - use the incredibly simple Boot Camp software to install a windows partion - you can even put it on a physically separate internal HD. You won't have to give up Half-Life 2 to work in OS X. BTW - with a good graphics card, XP games absoultely SCREAM on the Mac Pro.

A final word on prices - buy the base configuration desktop and add your own enhancements - it is incredibly easy because of the masterful internal design of the Mac Pro.

The cost of upgrading your HD or adding additional HDs is about $299 for a 500 GB SATA II from Apple. I bought TWO Seagate Barracuda 500 GB SATA II HDs online for $320. It was literally plug an play installation - no cables, no power connections. All that was needed was a small phillips-head screwdriver to mount the drives in the plugable, removable brackets. It took 5 minutes total for both drives. You could also have the work done at an authorized Apple reseller or by the "Genius" guys at an Apple store, if you are nervous about doing this yourself. Apple also has excellent, very clear PDF instructions on how to do this on the main web site

An upgrade to 4 GB of RAM from Apple costs $1100 - VERY pricey because of the heat sinks and ECC features. I purchased an additional 3GB of RAM online, buying "certified" (as opposed to "genuine") RAM w/heat sinks for about $530. Note that buying heat sink RAM is advisable if you want to keep your Mac Pro as quiet as possible. The case design is such that the airflow which cools the RAM passes over the CPU BEFORE reaching the memory. If your RAM overheats, you may experience performance degredation and the fan, which is actually rather loud at full speed, will be running a lot more.

In summary, I was able get my Mac Pro with an addtional 3 GB of memory and 1 TB (!) of storage at an $800 savings over the "offical" cost.

While the Mac Pro is by no means cheap, it represents exceptional performance value for dollar spent, especially if you upgrade outside of the Apple store. If you carefully compare major mfgr. PCs with the same specs, you will probably find that cost differences are in the low hundreds of dollars.

I'm delighted I fired Bill Gates - I couldn't have done it as little as a year ago. I now have the best of both worlds.

(5 out of 5)

Powerful Mac OS Workstation

First of all, the included 1GB RAM will not do justice to this machine. I added additional 2GB for total of 3GB, but I still need more when I use professional apps. I upgraded from a Dual G5 2.3, and Mac Pro is quite a bit faster in every operation except PPC only apps. For them, it's about as fast as before, provided you give it enough RAM. Rosetta translation works effectively, but it requires considerable amount of memory. This is my observation that (even for Universal Binary apps) Intel Macs seem to require more memory than G5. So do yourself a favor and get extra memory when you get a Mac Pro. Unfortunately FB-DIMMs are not cheap.

Once RAM issue is taken cared, this machine is a dream. It's quiet, a lot quieter than G5 which was relatively quiet to begin with. Expansion option is great. With 4 drive bays, you can easily create RAID configuration internally.

One big bonus of using a Mac Pro (or any Intel Mac for that matter) is, by using Parallels software, I can run Windows at native speed in virtual environment. Windows runs so fast (disk array helps) that booting up to Windows desktop is considerably faster than my AMD 64 based PC.

The only other thing I might add to the system at a later time is a more powerful graphics board. The included GeForce 7300 is seriously underpowered for such a high performance system.

Overall, I highly recommend this Mac to anyone considering getting one.

(5 out of 5)

Mac vs Dell price

The Dual 2.67 MacPro configured standard is $2350 today at Amazon, free ship. Add $199 for three year Apple care=$2550

The Dual 2.67 Dell configured below (identical other than the graphics card, but using the cheapest, and similar one) is $3441 + shipping, or at least $900 more. I think the other guy forgot the second processor.

That does not include the required $79 annual subscription to Norton Antivirus... Even if you want to run XP, get a Mac...

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Dell Precision Workstation 490 MiniTower - 32bit
$3,441

Date 9/12/2006 9:37:45 PM Central Standard Time
Dell Precision Workstation 490 MiniTower - 32bit:
Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5150 2.66GHz, 4MB L2,1333
Genuine Windows® XP Professional, SP2 with Media
2nd Processor:
Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5150 2.66GHz, 4MB L2,1333
128MB PCIe x16 ATI FireGL V3400, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA
1GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 667MHz, ECC (2 DIMMS)
250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM NCQ Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst Cache
48XCDRW AND 16XDVD+/-RW, w/Cyberlink PowerDVD(tm) and Roxio Creator(tm)
No Floppy Drive
No Monitor Option
Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard with built-in 2-port USB Hub
Dell USB 2-Button Optical Mouse with Scroll
1394a Controller Card