I know this is not to forum for this subject, but I am expanding market share and quarterly revenue in the near future.

I just sold my two year old G5 to a friend.  When should I replace it with a new desktop?

Any suggestions?

Well if you just sold a desktop and you need one, then I would say, errr, that you should buy one now?

Go iMac 24” 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo Extreme with Leopard. You won’t believe how fast it is.

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”]Well if you just sold a desktop and you need one, then I would say, errr, that you should buy one now?

Go iMac 24” 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo Extreme with Leopard. You won’t believe how fast it is.

I have my PowerBook, so I can live without one for a few months if I have to.

The iMac sounds enticing, but I have lots of videos, pictures, and music so I am afraid of not having enough room.

External USB drive perhaps?

[quote author=“omacvi”]The iMac sounds enticing, but I have lots of videos, pictures, and music so I am afraid of not having enough room.

Order it with a 1-Terabyte drive then - you can do it online

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”][quote author=“omacvi”]The iMac sounds enticing, but I have lots of videos, pictures, and music so I am afraid of not having enough room.

Order it with a 1-Terabyte drive then - you can do it online

Hey that sounds pretty good.  I looked into it and I like the idea much better now.

Now the issue is do I buy after Leopard or before?.  I would like Leopard for my PowerBook but will need to buy it separately for it.  Is it worth it?

If you can hold out you may want to wait for MacWorld in Jan. There’s a good possibility of new Intel 45 NM chips being announced, maybe BluRay, if you want a Mac Pro, the Cinema Displays are way overdue for a refresh.  . Plus Leopard may be up to 10.5.1 or .2 by then.

[quote author=“JimDE”]If you can hold out you may want to wait for MacWorld in Jan. There’s a good possibility of new Intel 45 NM chips being announced, maybe BluRay, if you want a Mac Pro, the Cinema Displays are way overdue for a refresh.  . Plus Leopard may be up to 10.5.1 or .2 by then.

And at MW you may as well hold out until the June WWDC.. and then at WWDC you might as well hold out until October for-something-new
Bang for buck, the 24” iMac is absolutely unbeatable. Buy it with Leopard, this month - and go for the fastest model you can order, with the largest hard drive. The best deal you’ll get is by ordering the 24” 2.3Ghz Core 2 Duo option with 1GB of RAM, and upgrading that on-line to the 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo Extreme. Then order a 2GB stick of RAM from a 3rd party supplier and stick it in the second spare RAM slot. You’ll save yourself a fortune.

All very good points.  That is what my original plan was.  But cost becomes an issue.  Do I save some money and buy and iMac in three weeks, or is it worth the HD Display and additional speed for a better system (Mac Pro) in Jan (that may be announced but not ship until March)

All very good points.  That is what my original plan was.  But cost becomes an issue.  Do I save some money and buy and iMac in three weeks, or is it worth the HD Display and additional speed for a better system (Mac Pro) in Jan (that may be announced but not ship until March)

You’re right, the probable March ship date of an Jan announcement is an issue. (BTW I’m keeping my G5 even when I get a new Mac Pro, so I have a little more wiggle room to wait for what I want. Therefore take my comments with a grain of salt ). Leopard 10.5.0 is an issue for me - I’d rather have at least 10.5.1.
If it were me, I’d look at what I do with the desktop that I can’t easily do on the laptop. The 24” iMac may do what you need right now (i.e. more screen space for stock charts). OTOH If you do pro-level video or audio or photo editing, or need color matching to printing presses and a non-gloss screen, the need to connect to an external RAID via fiber channel or install large amounts of RAM or drive 2 or more 30” monitors, etc, then it’s either the Mac Pro now or the Mac Pro later.

Personally, I will definitely be getting a Mac Pro in a 6 month time frame. But as an interim measure, I’ve seriously been looking at the 24” iMac. It does most of what I need and I can wait for the rest until later.

Unless you can give a good reason for needing a Mac Pro, go with the iMac. I haven’t seen anything in your posts yet that gives a reason.

I say this as an owner of both a Mac Pro and an iMac. My tower exists for specific video-editing purposes and it serves those needs very well. But aside from those specific things, I’m very, very happy with my iMac in every other respect. (And it’s the old Core 1 Duo model.)

iMac

I just sold my two year old G5 to a friend. When should I replace it with a new desktop?

I sold my G5 and 23-inch ACD to a friend (to entice him over to the light side) and bought a new iMac.

1. I bought a 24-inch iMac with a 2.8GHz cpu upgrade. No other upgrades.

2. Then I bought 4GB of memory from MacSales (current price is $195 USD). (I now have a 1GB stick sitting in my desk drawer, but I don’t care as the new memory is so cheap.)
I upgraded to 4GB because when you run VMware’s Fusion (Windows XP) and Photoshop and Dreamweaver and Word, you will need every bit of RAM you can put in your machine.

3. I do miss the second internal hard drive that was in my G5. The solution for me is a large 750GB FireWire 800 (not 400 or USB) external drive that is partitioned. I am also looking a NAS solutions such as the Iomega StorCenter Pro NAS 150d/2TB Server for archiving and backup. But, at $1K and up, I have not yet made a purchase.

4. I find the Radeon HD 2400 Pro video card more than adequate, but I don’t play any computer games.

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”][quote author=“JimDE”]If you can hold out you may want to wait for MacWorld in Jan. There’s a good possibility of new Intel 45 NM chips being announced, maybe BluRay, if you want a Mac Pro, the Cinema Displays are way overdue for a refresh.  . Plus Leopard may be up to 10.5.1 or .2 by then.

And at MW you may as well hold out until the June WWDC.. and then at WWDC you might as well hold out until October for-something-new
Bang for buck, the 24” iMac is absolutely unbeatable. Buy it with Leopard, this month - and go for the fastest model you can order, with the largest hard drive. The best deal you’ll get is by ordering the 24” 2.3Ghz Core 2 Duo option with 1GB of RAM, and upgrading that on-line to the 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo Extreme. Then order a 2GB stick of RAM from a 3rd party supplier and stick it in the second spare RAM slot. You’ll save yourself a fortune.

Tommo you’re absolutely right in terms of “buy it now if you need it now” and the current 24” iMac is unquestionably an excellent machine. This is why I think it’s good to look at what you actually need it for.

Personally I have a goal to transition from pro graphics/photo work (where Mac Pro is the weapon of choice) to stock trading/investing for a living (where a couple of 24” iMacs and an extra monitor or two would be great). But before I let go of the photo/graphics, I need to become more predictably consistent with the trading. (Which, BTW, is why I ask questions about trading decisions and technique of people who seem to be doing it better than me ) 

At the moment, my dual G5 / 4GB RAM / a couple TB storage, etc works okay for the photos & graphics. Obviously a new Mac Pro would be bigger/better/faster, but I can upgrade at my leisure. For trading, however, the G5 has some real disadvantages. Therefore an interim iMac for trading that could do other things as well is an advantage. This is why I simply suggested that he analyze what he actually uses a desktop to do and see whether he needs one now or can afford to wait.

Buying a new Mac

The best time to buy a new Mac is when you can afford it and need it.  Note Apple’s history has always made the current operating system the minimum operating system that will install on the Mac.  If you buy a new Mac now, you’ll be assured compatibility of all Intel Tiger applications.
If you wait till Leopard is released, then you might find yourself waiting till all your third party applications have been made Leopard compatible before you can get much use out of the machine.  So in some ways, the best time to buy is at the end of an operating system’s known cycle before the new one is released. Granted, you end up spending the $120 for the new operating system, but you get the best possible compatibility.  And don’t worry about known bugs in the machines.  They can happen just as easily to first generation as last generation Macs.  I’ve had a whole range of Macs of different periods in the model history, and no one Mac has been less reliable than the others.

Re: Buying a new Mac

[quote author=“gopher”]The best time to buy a new Mac is when you can afford it and need it.  Note Apple’s history has always made the current operating system the minimum operating system that will install on the Mac.  If you buy a new Mac now, you’ll be assured compatibility of all Intel Tiger applications.
If you wait till Leopard is released, then you might find yourself waiting till all your third party applications have been made Leopard compatible before you can get much use out of the machine.  So in some ways, the best time to buy is at the end of an operating system’s known cycle before the new one is released. Granted, you end up spending the $120 for the new operating system, but you get the best possible compatibility.  And don’t worry about known bugs in the machines.  They can happen just as easily to first generation as last generation Macs.  I’ve had a whole range of Macs of different periods in the model history, and no one Mac has been less reliable than the others.

Excellent point. I meant to say that earlier. If you want maximum compatibility, get it before Lepoard.

Oh, that is a wonderful point! Thanks for making it. It makes me feel much better. I bought my new MacBook 10 days ago because I got a very good deal on it - it was a display model that had only been lightly used.