Seriously considering an Apple Mac Pro

Sassan, if someone told you to forget about your Mercedes because Lexus was better value, you probably wouldn't want to know? I know I had a series 4 VW Golf, which is one of the most popular cars in its class, and it was one of the most unreliable and unpleasant to drive cars I have ever had. Replacement Corolla is nearest thing to the pre GM Saabs that I can find, fine to drive all day no mechanical problems. Same with computers, some folks, in fact most on this forum have PCs and are probably happy and in control. But my heart sinks whenever I have to do anything on one (used to be the same in offices) as in MOST cases, it is not properly set up and the user has little idea how to perform the simplest operations. You don't come across mac users like that, unless you count yourself.

[sassan]

Originally Posted by daedal

You don't come across mac users like that, unless you count yourself.

Chris; Considering only 2 % of population using Mac, You don't come across mac users too often too. I get the pleasure to know them once and if spotted. No matter what I like you very much
Consider if you could try RR first, that can be changed with your VW, when RR is half the price then would you get out of that (I think your Lexus vs Mercedes eg works better though). Unfortunate thing is we try to always go with the notation, "My God is better than yours", without knowing the other God or for that mater what God is... Oppsss this is not in my principles to discuss religion so my apology. Its good to have choices. Use yours as wisely as you are.

[Leif]

Originally Posted by daedal

I know I had a series 4 VW Golf, which is one of the most popular cars in its class, and it was one of the most unreliable and unpleasant to drive cars I have ever had.

I am not sure I understand the gist of the conversation. But I'll add my penn'orth.

VW have long had a high reputation in the UK and yet user experience suggests that it is not deserved, at least as far as reliability is concerned. Mercedes also has a bad reputation, though they are now making big efforts to improve.

I am a cheap skate. I use Windows on a PC. I drive a Ford. But I (usually) buy Nikon rather than Sigma etc. Sometimes it pays to pay IMO.

[Birdsnapper]

Like Eastman with Kodak and Ford with er, Ford, the brilliance of Gates and IBM was not in making the best, but in making the affordable. I suspect that there would be few people with home computers if it were not for the PC - or, at least, we'd still be playing on Spectrums.

For the record the mac share of market at 2% is USA desktop. For example mac is top of European education market 15% (Dell 14%) and 19% & 59% in French & Swiss education.

I don't think any of that is relevent. What matters is that it is usually smaller companies that carry out intelligent R&D and make technical advances. Larger companies are rarely interested in anything other than maximising their profits. The first generation of 'IBM comaptible' PCs held back computing for a decade, Windows 98 being the first usable version of Windows which Mac, Atari and Amiga had been using for a decade. Microsoft killed off the mac Darwin proposal that would have made vast savings for us all on software (as each sub-set of functions would run in same windows) both financial and ease of use/learning.

The route to making any machine cheaper is to make it last longer, not deliberately build in obsolescence. I think my 1989 mac IIci is still running at a collectors after having being used by my daughter for uni around 2000 and capable of running earlier version of every program I then had. My 1998 one is still going happily in a Kenyan charity. It would read everything, mac, PC, Atari back to 1987.

Lastly, most high tech machines are way beyond what the buying consumer can evaluate and most reviews are 'buggins turn' promo. Fortunately cameras have not become monopolised by an antisocial company and we do still have a good choice and the reviews are more serious. Don't anyone knock or mock the smaller players.

[Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Zeb

HD: 2x400GB Western Digital Caviar SATAII £135.72
Stripe these for extra data security. If one fails the data is backed up on the other.

Zeb, striping doesn't provide any extra security at all. What striping does is write a portion of the data to each of two discs simultaneously, there's no copy of your data involved and if you lose one disc you're up a brown creek sans paddle. Striping is used to improve the speed of writing data to a disc array.

Mirroring, on the other hand, does provide this security but the backup reduces the usable space to half the capacity of the array. Mirroring and striping can be combined to provide increased write performance and backup but this requires an array of at least 4 (ideally matched) discs (with half the capacity being available).

[Tannin]

Originally Posted by Leif

I do agree that Vista might be too new to be worth using. Most businesses will stick with XP for the next year or two on the grounds of cost and stability.

Actually, you could go a bit further than that. A lot of businesses are only now looking at switching from Windows 2000 over to XP. Bigger firms tend to be very conservative, for the very good reason that mistakes and bugs in an OS cost them big dollars. It will be a long time before Vista gains much space on the corporate desktop: lots of downside to it, no upside.

Up in the big end of town, the motto is usually "never buy a Microsoft product before Service Pack 2 comes out". That's an excellent working rule-of-thumb.

[Zeb]

Originally Posted by Wheeler

Zeb, striping doesn't provide any extra security at all. What striping does is write a portion of the data to each of two discs simultaneously, there's no copy of your data involved and if you lose one disc you're up a brown creek sans paddle. Striping is used to improve the speed of writing data to a disc array.

Mirroring, on the other hand, does provide this security but the backup reduces the usable space to half the capacity of the array. Mirroring and striping can be combined to provide increased write performance and backup but this requires an array of at least 4 (ideally matched) discs (with half the capacity being available).

oops! I always get these the wrong way round!!!

Just reading back through the posts... I can't imagine why anyone would want to buy anything from Dell considering their parts are budget parts? I don't know many IT engineers who would buy one. None of those I've worked with would!