8 Core Mac Pro, Dual 2.8 quad core Xeon 5400 series processors, 16 Gigs Ram, ATI Radeon 2600XT, 3.5 Terrabytes of drives. System $2799. Monitors $1799 each. The new system boxed up next to my macbook 17″ portable w/30 inch external apple monitor setup. I had purchased a great system with dual 30 inch screens no less for the music studio in the rear… only I have not had time to set it up in the rear yet, but wanted to mention it here before the new mac pro models come out from apple.. haha. In fact I dont even have enough room in front to showcase the dual 30 inch screens setup (which together cost more than the computer itself), I will have it all set up in back with the new music equipment and post about it soon. But for now I’m gonna mention how I love the new Mac Pro model. NOTE: I went with the basic ATI card since the only upgrade is the already antiquated Nvidia 8800GT. I’m not gonna be gaming on this box, its mainly for music, Protools, and the Apple pro apps. Most of which are optomized for the ATI cards. I also loved the older G5 model, but for all out speed and real time music / video applications I needed an upgrade in the music studio. I can handle more tracks, more soft synths, etc.. with the new machine. Here are the 2 systems… out with the old and in with the new, but they look very similar on the outside, but are totally different beasts on the inside. the next step after you buy a bare bones Apple Mac Pro system is to purchase your hard drives and ram elsewhere. My configuration would have been well over $15,000 if I had purchased it from apple 🙂 You can get away with only spending $8,000 or so if you do it on your own. I originally wanted to go with 32 gigs of ram, but figured the ram wrong and thought the mac pro had more slots.. haha.. so I ended up with the ability to go to 16 gigs with the 2GB sticks. As it stands I only have 8 gigs in there at the moment and have not gotten around to filling up the slots yet. Hard drives slide out, you mount the drive on a sub plate and slide it in. There are no cables anywhere. The ram installs easily on 2 sub boards that pop out of the machine. Hard drives are just as easy to install. No tools required for any of this. I also decided on the new Greenpower drives from WD. They use about half the power of regular drives and are just as fast. You may think why would you run these ? well in raid configurations they are plenty fast for audio or video. So why not save some some energy since when they are running they are on all the time. Note the Mac pro can sleep drives individually inside the case as well. Bottom line: the new Mac Pro is one of the best systems I’ve ever owned for both OS X and Windows ! On the Mac Pro you can dual boot from different had drives and dedicate one drive to each OS if you prefer and with room for 4 terrabytes inside, there is plenty of room. The only negative for some may be the slow graphics cards that come standard, with only the Nvidia 8800 GT available as an upgrade at this time. If you are looking for a nice computer for music and video editing, and specially if you are already invested in the Apple Pro apps or Protools, etc.. the new Mac Pro is a no brainer, just buy one. haha