Looking to upgrade to Mac Pro - need advice

Like the title says I'm making the final switch to Mac. I already have a Macbook Pro and love it. My home machine is a Dell PC that is slowly dying. Since I've gotten more involved in this crazy hobby of U/W photography I realize I need a good machine to be able to do all the post production stuff. I've looked at the new iMac and while it is pretty slick from an all inclusive package I'm not all that excited with the mirror that is the monitor. So I'm looking at the Mac Pro. I like the fact that it seems to be a great machine that is really easy to upgrade in the future.

Here's my question. As a photographer, what would be the minimum speed and RAM needed? Could I get away with just the base model of 2.6GHz quad with 1GB RAM? My u/w photography is still just a hobby that I hope to someday move more toward a semiprofessional level (got to plan for my retirement somehow.) I figure that I'll get a large external drive for file storage and backup. Cheaper than having Mac add it on.

I know that a lot of you guys use the Mac pro so any advice would be great.

Regards,

Dave

I have the 2x3GHz Mac Pro and love it. I'm sure the 2x2.66GHZ would be plenty fast enough as well. I would recommend more than 1GB of RAM though, at least 2GB, 3 or 4GB would be better. I run Aperture and Photoshop nicely.

Dave

Mac OS X and the requisite image editing tools require more ram than 1GB. I think you're feel the increase of 4GB RAM vs the 0.34ghz in processor.

Obviously adding 2nd or more harddrives is great for redundancy but also good to push the scratch disk to another volume.

I'd buy more RAM over the fastest processor, if that's your budget choice. Or plan to add RAM as you go. But I'd agree that 2GB of RAM is sort of minimal.

That all being said, I use my ancient, moldy ol' Quicksilver G4 tower with only a 1.2 processor and 1.5GB or RAM professionally. I guess I'd rather buy cameras with my money, ;-).

Hard drives are very cheap, see if you can just get a basic box and add your own, rather than pay a premium from Apple. I just bought a 650GB drive for $110. Buy two of the same size drive and use one to back up the other automatically.

It really depends a lot on how large of prints you're going to work with on a regular basis, and the s/w you want to run.

Take a "work-back" approach; what are you going to do with it, what are you going to produce? Then look at the system requirements. Do buy a bigger machine than you need, you'll grow into it. Take a few pics into the Apple Store and play around, they won't probably have Photoshop loaded, but it's faster than Aperture anyway... You'll spend plenty on s/w, so budget for it. BTW, if you already have Win s/w, contact Adobe for a "cross-platform" license and new discs, it's very reasonable; you don't have to re-buy the s/w.

Jack

I already have a Macbook Pro and love it.

Why not just get an external monitor, keyboard and mouse for you MacBook Pro?

I have a 2.33 GHz MBP with 2 GB of RAM (could use a little more). I have upgraded to a 200GB 7200 RPM hard drive. I use the MBP with an Apple 23" Display. I find this system to be more than adequate for running Aperture. It is nice to have everything on one machine.

I use a MacBook Pro (3Gb RAM) in combination with a pile of hard drives and a 30 inch HD monitor. I take the laptop away with me but leave behind all the important stuff on my desk. It works for me. I use CS3 and Word. However, I know nothing about computers. I just get what I need to get the job done. If I knew about computers I would probably spend all my time looking at a PC!

I would agree with what everyone else says. If budget is an issue, go for the slower clock speed vs memory. I wouldn't ever buy the memory from Apple, they just want way too much for it. The MacPro has enough memory slots to make it easy to expand (same for drives) so I would get both from a 3rd party, such as MacSales.com

Good luck, enjoy the power.