Why I buy this one ?
- Two 2.8 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processors with dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses
- 2 GB RAM expandable up to 32 GB, 320 GB hard drive, 16x Double-Layer SuperDrive
- ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB (Two dual-link DVI)
- Two FireWire 800 ports, two FireWire 400 ports, five USB 2.0 ports, and two USB 2.0 ports on keyboard
- Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard (includes Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, Spotlight, Dashboard, Mail, iChat, Safari, Address Book, QuickTime, iCal, DVD Player, Photo Booth, Front Row, Xcode Developer Tools), iLife '08 (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, and GarageBand)

J&R Music and Computer World offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $2,699.00 Usually ships in 3-4 business days

DataVision Computer Video offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $2,764.60 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Amazon.com offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $2,775.08 Usually ships in 24 hours

PowerMax offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $2,862.88 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Techno Intelligence offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $3,099.83 Usually ships in 4-5 business days

What our customer's say!

"Hi, I'm a Mac :)", I've decided to retire my second generation G4 (8.5 years old) as it has served its purpose. Never complaining or crashing unlike WinTurd machines I've used at work and home. But video wasn't great in a web browser and I couldn't upgrade to the latest OS or use the latest Adobe suite.

The new Mac arrived and in a few minutes I slapped in another 8 gigs of ram (4 x 2) and two 1TB drives. This machine SMOKES faster than anything I've ever used. Photoshop CS3 opens in like 2 seconds. I could start up and shut down 5 times before my Winturd machine will fully boot.

And what people say about silence is true. When you walk into a room there's virtually no sound, it's whisper silent. Of course when you use a DVD you can hear the drive spinning the disc.

This Mac ROCKS, just buy it.

"Great workstation at great price with few flaws", I know how you always here how apple products are much more expensive then a like minded pc. well, when it comes to workstations, it just isn't true. If you look at the competition (dell) and look at a similarly specced Precision, the price of the dell is higher. Plus, with Apple, you get the option of running other OS as well as OS X. I run os x, windows xp, vista business, and ubuntu on my macbook pro and i couldn't ask for more flexiblity from a laptop that most people who aren't familiar with the real Apple experience would just say is some type of trend or status symbol.
There is no doubt this is the real deal when it comes to workstation use.
The only things about the Mac Pro i can find to criticize are the lack of a higher level video card in the stock machine. You can get it configured with an 8800gt from apple but the nvidia card just can't match the core performance. ATI now offers the hd3870 which is a big step above the 2600xt and a nice performer in os x and windows . i wish apple would have specced the HD a little higher, but the price you are paying for this machine is for the two cpus, the motherboard with a little profit for apple. If you are looking for a workhorse, this is it. Of all the pcs i have ever built for gaming, work, and everything else, i am much more happier with the Mac Pro. If you get this, i would highly recommend bumping the ram up to at least 8gb, the kits are fairly cheap these days, and you get 4x2gb sticks to give you the full output performance of the memory system (2 sticks just doesn't cut it).
oh, the only other thing is don't strain your back picking the box up, it's amazingly heavy for a computer.


"Overkill?? Hardly!", I'm not going to tell you how wonderful this Mac is. If you've been around Macs for any length of time, you already know there will be no disappointment if you choose this model.

Instead, I want to address those who wonder if the Mac Pro is overkill. Listen, if you make your living on the Mac (or if you simply want the best) this machine is a terrific value. It is an engineering marvel, especially from the user's point of view. It is highly self-serviceable thanks to the designers at Apple. If you want to add RAM (cheap right now), a second optical drive, an expansion card, or an internal hard drive or three, its a snap. Oh yeah, and it's very fast and practically noiseless.

Each time I buy a new Mac, I remind myself that you don't buy the computer you need today, you buy the one you'll need tomorrow.

One more thing. If you can't pull the trigger on this Mac, consider the iMac. All my consumer-level Mac-using friends have one and without exception they love 'em. The only thing is, the iMac is an enclosed unit that you won't be able to service yourself in the event your hard drive or optical drive fails.

"Blazing Fast and Dependable.", Self-installed another 8GB of RAM along with a 1TB drive.

This thing is so fast that I just keep looking for more tasks to throw at it but the Activity monitor keeps showing that it has tons of processing power and RAM to spare.

Wow. Nice machine, Apple.

"The Finest PC you can buy", Read my other review about the G5 for the software advantages of the Mac. And my MacBook review about running Windows on your Mac. Let's talk about the hardware:

First off I don't own one of these machines, but I work with them extensively at work (I'm a PC/Mac Technician). This model in particular. I've probably seen at least 300 of these machines, and the failure rate is about 1 in 300 thus far. So, build quality is great.

Its 2 USB and one Firewire 400 port on the front are very convenient. It has 3 USB, 1 FW400 and 1 FW800 port on the back. The stock video card can drive 2 decent sized DVI monitors. It has a combined Optical/Analog minijack for audio in and one for audio out, as well as SPDIF in and out ports. It also has 2 Ethernet ports. Inside it has 3 open PCIe slots, 4 drive bays and an open removable/optical bay. Aesthetically, it's one of the nicest looking machines I've seen. The case is aluminum, and very solid. (We often take a couple of Macs and sit on the machines without fear of breaking the case. We're even jokingly, made a MacBed out of about 5 or 6 of them. The MacBed gets 1.5 stars.)

It is simply the best designed hardware money can buy PC or Mac. Upgrading parts is as easy as it can get. Installing a drive is child's play. It's so simple my mom could do it. Upgrading RAM is a snap. (Though maybe not mom-proof.) It runs very quiet as everyone has said. I have to look at the light on the power switch often to see if a machine is on when the screen has been powered down, that's how quiet it is. Everything in this machine is as well thought out as the software (OS X) is, if not better. In fact I would almost venture to say that there is nothing I can think of that could have been done better. (See Caveats below for its 2 flaws.)

Even the side door is a snap. If you're a PC user you know how hard it is on some PCs to even close the side door because the panel is flexible and won't line up? So you sit there for 10 minutes trying to get it back on, only to give up and leave it off half the time? Well the MacPro is just ht opposite. You have to TRY to mis-align the thing. To open it you simple pull a latch and the door pops open. To close it you slide the tab into the slot and close it like a door, and there is a satisfying click when it's closed. And that's just the side door.

Let's talk about speed:
Most of the current Macs boot up in less than 30 seconds from button press to logon screen. After you type in (or select) your user name and type in your password (*though you can configure it to automatically logon), the machine is ready to use -- meaning everything is completely loaded and the system is idle in maybe 15-20 seconds in stock configuration. And that's with the stock 320GB HD. So, all told you can be up and running in about a minute from a cold start on this model Mac.

Applications launch very fast as well. Most will bounce in the dock a few times and just come up. Some, like Adobe Photoshop and MS Word take longer, but they're very big programs. I've never taken a stopwatch to them, but I estimate about 5-10 seconds for most app launches. With a few, you literally blink after you click the icon on the dock and they're up and running.

Caveats:
With all these pluses there must be some minuses right? There's 2: First off: The weight. Unless you're used to carrying around 50 pounds of weight, these are pretty cumbersome because of the second design flaw: The handles, they're very uncomfortable to use (after all there's 50 pounds cutting off your circulation at the edge of the handles), but I'm glad they're there. I'm not worried about a system slipping out on my hands when I'm moving one, unlike a lot of PCs where you have to hunt for a stable place to hold on to the plastic most of those boxes are made out of.

A word about 10.5 (Leopard):
My other reviews on the G5 and MacBook cover Mac OS X (the mac's unique operating system) more generally and give the pros and cons vs. Winodws, but they were written before Leopard came out. In short, 10.5 (Leopard) is awesome. So, without further ado, here's the best of what Leopard offers:

Screen sharing/remote control is the best new feature. It works better than Windows RDC too because you don't have to have one person log out.

Time machine is a backup application built into the OS that makes backups painless -- just shell out a hundred bucks for another Hard Drive and you'll be set.

Stacks (where you click one folder icon in the dock and a grid of other icons spring up out of it) is a mixed bag. New users might like it, while older users might not. It's easy enough to switch is back to list view or folder behavior. (Right click the stack icon on the dock -- or click and hold -- and choose View content as "List" and/or Display as "Folder".

iChat 4: about the best and easiest teleconferencing software out there.

Coverflow and page previews in the finder makes it even easier to find just what your looking for. cover flow basically shows document previews of everything from images to Word and PDF files to videos and audio files. Want to see a larger preview? just highlight the document and hit the space bar. This saves you the trouble of launching the application just to look to see if that .tif is the right one.

Exposé and Spaces are huge time savers too. Exposé is a way to control all or some of the windows on screen. Just hit a function key (assignable by you) and all the windows on screen or of an app tile on you display so you can find the one buried under 5 other windows. Spaces allows you to have "virtual desktops" that you can quickly switch. Say you're working on music is garage band or reason and oyu have all the windows laid out how you like them and a Friend instant messages you. Instead of having to minimize and juggle windows, you simply switch to another desktop where you only have to see your IM window. When you're done a lcick of garage bad on the dock or a key-combo will switch the desktop and windows right back to where you were. Check out the Spaces and Exposé System Preferences for more cool features and ways to customize it.

There's more but ths rview is getting long. SO buying advice:
You can't go wrong with this machine or the 3.0 model if you have the money to spend.

To PC users considering this or building/buying a PC: I built a PC system on par spec wise with the last rev of this machine about a year and a half ago for about $300-$400 less* (and I still didn't have as nice of a machine hardware design-wise as this one) -- but then I have to run Windows or Linux on it. The OS X will save you time and energy in the first 6 months to justify the added expense.

(*Yes, I probably could have built it cheaper but I was buying parts comparable in quality to Apple Hardware.)

To First Time Mac Purchasers:
Unless you're pretty well off, you have a demanding Application (video/3d rendering/software development) or need the extra 3 PCI slots, (or if you just like to cut to the chase and get the best when you jump into things), you'll probably be better served saving a bit of cash by getting an entry level consumer Mac first to try things out, then step up to the big boy if you need it.

To Mac Users considering this machine:
If you're comning from a non-intel Mac, you'll be blown away by the speed boost. If you're coming form a consumer level Mac, then you'll also be very pleased with the added speed and the quality of the hardware. I'm assuming you're gettin this because you need the speed. If you just surf the web all day and write Word docs, save your money and get an iMac, MacBook or MacBook Pro or even, dare I say, a Mac Mini. This is really a machine for people who need the power and are willing to pay for it.

Summary:
There is yet to be any review under 4 stars for this machine and it's been out for the better half of a year. And this is in a world where you can't please everyone. That right there should tell you how good these systems are. Expect this machine to outlast everything else currently on the market. If you cna afford it, it's a great purchase decision. You won't be disappointed.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"fast, but", It is fast for general works, not so much when running APPL's motion. For that, you need a lot of RAM, a lot!

"A switcher, thanks to the Mac Pro and OS X", I'm writing this review from the perspective of a power Windows user, switching to OS X after 20 years of Windows. If you have been using Windows, I'm hoping this review will help you with your transition to the Mac.

PROS:
-To start off, as everyone else in their reviews has stated, the Mac Pro is whisper quiet. I can barely hear the system, even when running many applications. You do hear the hard drive, especially after adding a second drive, but the sound is minimal. I thought most of the other reviewers were exaggerating about the quietness, but they were not at all.

-Setting up the Mac Pro was very easy. I did not have to change any network settings to connect to the internet, my PCs, my NAS drive, or my printer. Since my printer was networked, all it took was a username/password to connect. My printer's picture even shows up when printing and viewing the details. Everything connected seamlessly out of the box. I just had to do a quick configuration for my multi-monitors, which took about 30 seconds. I should point out that setting up multi monitors on Vista took about 4 minutes, even though I have been using Windows all of my life.

-Simply, the Mac Pro is very fast. Before ever using the Mac Pro, I did think the system would feel slightly faster than it is, but checking the "Activity Monitor," the processors are barely used, so it could be the lack of dual quad support for most of the programs I'm using. When programs start to take advantage of dual quads and quad cores in general, I do think the system will feel even faster.

-Installing programs is a breeze. Every single program that needs to be installed, installs the exact same way. The same # of steps, the same process, and the same results. Most programs don't include an uninstaller (of course, Office Mac does). Just drag and drop the single file from the Applications folder to the trash, and it's deleted.

-I installed Vista using Boot Camp, for programs not yet available for the Mac. I then installed Parallels to run a virtual machine of the Boot Camp partition. Installation was a breeze and Parallels is a great program, as long as you're using build 5604+, since a flickering issue was present with .3 and parallels prior to that version. Using Parallels to run Vista and OS X simultaneously since there is a seamless integration of both operating systems when moving from one to the other. For example, the mouse moves from one OS to the other without any button presses. You can also open Vista programs on OS X programs and vice versa. There is also a Coherence mode, where you can have both Vista and OS X running seamlessly together in one window. I'm using dual monitors, but you can use Spaces for a virtual multi monitor setup and still have the seamless integration between OS X and Vista. One recommendation for using Vista on Parallels is to upgrade to 4 gigs of RAM. 2 gigs for Vista and 2 for OS X. I would not recommend running Vista with just 1 gig. If you use Windows XP, 1 gig should be fine, but Vista uses a lot of RAM. I do feel like I made a mistake going with Vista instead of XP.

-You can still watch your WMV files on OS X. Download Flip4Mac straight from microsoft.com and those files will open with Quicktime.

-Adium is a great and free instant messaging client that will work with almost any service out there. The integration of a program called Growl takes instant messaging to a new level. You can change the icon in the Dock, where I have Yoda Duck as my icon.

-As stated above, I did upgrade to 4 gigs of RAM. The installation of the RAM was extremely easy. Opening the system and taking a look inside, the design of the Mac Pro is a work of art. You cannot see a cable, and the air flow of the system is unbeatable. (will Apple have a water-cooled Mac Pro?) I paid $125 for Kingston RAM (instead of $500 from Apple). The installation was very easy, though it did require one more step than standard RAM installations. The RAM was displayed in the OS X system info right after booting. I highly recommend 4 gigs of RAM if you are using a VM, especially if that VM is Vista.

-I also added a second hard drive to the system to use as my Time Machine backup. Again, installation was a breeze. Hit a button and pull out the tray. Use the built in screws and push the tray back in. That's it. Once I booted, OS X stated a drive was not formatted and that I needed to format the drive. A quick click and 5 minutes later, I had an extra 320 gigs of space.

-Time Machine is simply the easiest backup solution. Click a button to turn it on, choose a hard drive, and that's it. If you want to sell someone on the the Mac Pro or any Mac, show the recovery of a file using Time Machine.

-Working with the Finder is quick and easy. Find the files you want and click the spacebar to get a preview. Additionally, you can quickly and easily find a program, files, etc., using Spotlight. Spotlight indexes your entire computer without reading and writing to the hard drive as much as Vista. If you use Vista, you'll hear the hard drive indexing every so often, whereas on OS X, you will not hear a blip.

-No need for defragmenting. There isn't a native defragmenter in OS X. Apple recommends that if you feel you need to defrag, a system restart will do it. Though there are defrag utilities in the Apple support docs, it states that defragging could even decrease performance!

-The system just does not crash. The Force Quit application, much like CTR-ALT-DEL, is something I have not used in the over a month of using my Mac Pro. On the other hand, Vista has crashed on me since installing it, but this could be due to it being setup as a VM, so I cannot completely fault Vista.

-If you want a program, chances are it exists in OS X. There are certain specialized programs that will not work, but with time, these should be added as well, as the OS X market share grows. Programs like Yummy FTP and Coda, to edit HTML, are all out there. Interestingly, I found that many products have multiple competitors, where you'd think OS X wouldn't have that many programs written for it.

-I do like the keyboard that the system comes with. It types very well and is very quiet. The mighty mouse is not useable for me, because I'm left-handed. I do not invert my keys, so I still use the right part of the mouse as my right-click. Try clicking on the right side and 90% of the time, nothing will happen. Now try with your right hand, it will always work.

-Great support by Mac. I called once, and the support was quick and easy. It's obvious that the initial person answering the call has limited knowledge, but she asked many times that I could be transferred to another, more experienced technician. (I called to confirm if Time Machine was not available with my NAS drive.) The phone support should be longer, but you can purchase more time if you feel the need.

-The Mac Pro, though pretty large, looks fantastic and also has nice handles on the top, so you can lift the system pretty easily. Even the power plug is designed to fit seamlessly in the port.

CONS
-First and foremost, do not expect to play games like Cyris on this system. Though the RAM and processor speeds well exceed the recommended specs, the video card of the Mac Pro is not up to it. The ATi VC is pretty weak in this respect. If you expect to game, I'll suggest the Nvidia 8800GT which can now be bought outside of Apple. Also, the VC options in general are limited. You must use a VC flashed with the Mac Bios.

-The #1 reason I am running Vista is because of Outlook. There is no good way (one program, called Little Machines, was able to transfer the files, but without any attachments, though it did work pretty well) of bringing my PST file from Outlook to either Mail or even Microsoft's own program, Entourage. I have 2 gigs worth of email and losing everything to move to Entourage was too much. I hope there will be a native way of transferring those files over, with their attachments, seamlessly. Much like Boot Camp, I hope Apple comes up with a solution, even if Microsoft does not. Without Boot Camp, I would have never purchased the Mac Pro.

-The same transfer issue applies to Quicken. There is no native way of bringing the QDF file to Mac. There are instructions of how to convert the file, but you will have to make large concessions. For example, all category names must be 15 characters or less. Additionally, not everything is moved over. You lose too much information for a program in which every bit of information is important.

-Though hard drives are cheap, there isn't an option to use Time Machine with my previously purchased NAS drive, even if I were to format in the native OS X file system. Time Capsule, Apple's own NAS, is supported. I was hoping this would be added in 10.5.3, but it was not. I'd like to have an external backup as well, just in case of a power spike causing both hard drives to fail internally.

-A shortage of USB ports on the back. The system comes with 3 USB ports on the back. Pretty low by today's standards. I never use Firewire, even though there are two of them. There are similar ports on the front though.

-A system as expensive as this should not only have a fast hard drive, it should have a fast top-of-the-line hard drive. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Mac Pro uses a 7200 RPM hard drive with 8mb of cache. I'd expect at least 16mb of cache and possibly even a 10,000 RPM drive. How can a $2,700 system not have a faster hard drive?

-Though Safari is a nice browser overall (the web clip feature, for example) I'd like to see a more complete browser, with constant updates, like Firefox. Though Firefox does have a memory issue, those should be solved in version 3. Overall Firefox is a better browser. I feel Safari has some catching up to do. I hope to see an updated version shortly, even if Safari is at version 3 itself, the updates seem slow and Apple is pretty quiet regarding its Safari plans.

-An extremely small issue, but using Command to copy and paste is frustrating being left-handed, since the keys are so close to each other. I wish there was a way to alter the keyboard shortcuts.

I highly recommend the book Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual. This book contains a lot of information not found elsewhere while containing shortcuts and info in one convenient book.

The bottom line is that I've switched and I'm looking forward to the time when I can delete my Windows partition and move to OS X full time. Once the email and Quicken issues are hopefully solved, I will be using the Mac Pro and OS X full time. (Unfortunately, a PC will be a must as a second computer for some time.) You'll learn the equivalents of Task Manager, keyboard shortcuts, etc., specific to OS X in no time and be a switcher from Windows to Mac. Every user will have their own experiences. I have mentioned many cons, but none of them are a deal breaker. On the other hand, the pros make the switch a must.

"Unbelievable!", This machine is ridiculously powerful. My wife works as and Art Director and she uses her Mac every day with Adobe CS3.

She had a dual G5 that was limited in the amount of memory it could support (4Gb max) and to make a long story short, she needed to replace it with a Mac that could open huge files in Photoshop.

This Mac is unbelievable. First of all the design inside the box is brilliant. The way it is designed, it allows the air to go through the entire case (since it has fans in the front and in the back). Adding memory or hard drives has been simplified to the maximum and it is now error proof.

This Mac uses 800MHz RAM and it can support 8 sticks Max. Each stick can be up to 4Gb each for a maximum RAM of 32Gb. Due to the bus they put in this machine, if you can put 8 sticks in it, it is even better as it can now access them in parallel for a bus width of 256 bits.

Don't buy the RAM with Apple as they are obviously gouging. I bought the RAM at Other World Computing and their pricing is much more reasonable.

On top of it, I bought VMWare Fusion to run Windows on this Mac and it simply flies. With its 8 cores, you have more power than most applications will ever need. However, if you need to crunch data for a living, this machine saves a lot of time. Just an example: on her former Mac (the dual G5 with 4GB of RAM) Photoshop 7 took 30 minutes to open a 1.6Gb file and the scrolling through the hi-res image was sluggish. On this machine (8-core with 16Gb of RAM), Photoshop CS3 takes about 1.5 minutes to open the same file and the scrolling is smooth.

I had a look at a comparable Dell PC before buying this one, but as of today, there is still no configuration that directly compares to this Mac. The Precision T5400 or T7400 are probably the closest machines. However, as soon as you add 2 quad core CPU's to the configuration of the Dell, the price explodes and the Mac is much cheaper.

There are other configurations of this Mac (8-core @3.0 GHz and 8-core @3.2 GHz.) I think these other configurations cannot justify the extra cost. So far, with the 8-core @2.8 GHz, I have never been able to max out the CPU's and this looks like there is a bottleneck in the system that is limiting the amount of data the CPU's can crunch. Considering the amount of RAM I have in this box (16Gb) I don't think it was swapping. My hunch is that the bus, even though it is faster than the previous generations, is still limiting what the processors can do. I think this version is the best deal as the faster CPU's in the other versions will be marginally faster than this one.

Bottom line: This is an amazing machine for the price. Most users won't need this kind of power but if you make a living with your machine, having a monster like this is definitely worth it, especially if you add a ton of RAM.

"Very fast and quiet", I'm not a switcher, but have been chugging along on an old G4 for the last 9 years. The Mac Pro 2.8 is simply an incredible upgrade. 8 processors means video encoding is a breeze, and any other task I throw at it just can't seem to slow it down. Sorry if the other reviews are more in depth than this -- I mostly just wanted to add in my 5-star rating. This is a great machine and you won't regret it.

"NOT backwards compatible with OS 10.4", This is a fantastic computer, as all MACs are, but it comes with OS 10.5 Leopard installed is NOT backwards compatible to OS 10.4 Tiger. Tiger is the last operating system with Rosetta, which will run OS 9 programs. I need this backwards compatibility, so I had to return the system. That said, Amazon was very easy with the returns.