I finally ordered the Mac Pro that will kick the last "standing" PC out of this place :D

I feel lighter already :))

Switching & Software

This is going to be my main/development machine. The PC I had for this since 2006 is actually still good from a hardware standpoint... the problem is with the software.

Windows to begin with. Everything has been said about Vista already. XP feels limited by now and I don't believe in Windows 7.  Also, it's about software that isn't available for Windows at all, like Things.

Of course there's also Windows software that doesn't work on Mac OS X. Nusphere PhpED for example. But for these cases there's VMware Fusion! Plus, there's so much more you can do with virtual machines once you start to get the feel of it...

My specs... and why :)

Now, even though it's about my main work machine and a business expense (which basically cuts the price in half due to zero taxation), I tried to stay reasonable... Yet I feel like it's Christmas already ;)

  • Quad Core 2.66 GHz -- Actually, I'm a bit concerned about fan noise levels with higher speeds or with 8 cores :p
  • 8 GB of RAM in order to run several VMware virtual machines at once. Also, I know from experience that as soon as you're out of RAM, performance goes down the tubes (RAM is much more important than processor speed).
  • 1 TB 7200 rpm drive -- Staying away from RAID for now because let's face it... I don't crunch that much data and the occasional video editing I do is not HD (errr... yet :p)
  • 2x NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB graphic cards to run my 3 displays. Being able to connect 3 displays was my main reason for going Mac Pro instead of high-end iMac. There's three reasons why I keep my existing 2006 Sony monitors:
    • They work just fine and there is no software update issue
    • They have incomparable color rendering compared to 95% of other displays on the market
    • Apple may have tempted me to buy bigger and nicely designed screens but I just hate the glossy glass with a passion. Sure they look better when they're off. But when you try to work on them you always have window (real world windows) or lamp (real world lamps, not linux-apache-yada-yada) reflections somewhere.
  • and of course: Upgrade to Snow Leopard included for just 10€ S&H :p

Ideally I would have moved my ATI graphics cards from the PC to the Mac, but I was just easier to order new ones:

  • First you cannot order a Mac with zero graphics cards and bring your own. I'm not very happy about that but I understand why Apple would only ship machines that can work right out of the box.
  • Once you have one, it's pretty cheap to buy the second matching one.
  • I'm not sure the old ATIs have drivers for the mac...
  • ... and finally those ATI cards were the noisiest components of the PC. I hope Moore's law will contribute to giving me quieter cards for the same thoughput ;)

OK now in between assembling, shipping and getting the delivery guy not to show up at 8 a.m. (like they always do) it's probably going to take almost 2 weeks... during which I expect to wear the current PC down to it's bones... and release b2evolution 3.x stable too!

Back to work!

Comments from long ago:

Comment from: Keith

I’m not too enthused about Windows 7 either. MS is always making promises that they can’t keep. Plus, it’s so expensive. I could put it on preorder at Amazon for $120, and that was just for the upgrade. I recently bought a new version of a Linux distribution for less than $10. Speaking of which, I highly expect “upgrading” Windows would destroy my Linux partitions (considering that Windows can’t see Linux, I have no faith in it being able to leave it alone while upgrading), and I use Linux much more often than Windows (Windows is an “if I absolutely have to use it” type thing to me).

2009-09-03 06-05