Longevity of Mac Pro

[bobpensik]

I am currently on a 12" PB with 867Mhz processor, 60GB HD and 640MB RAM and it is still going.

Granted i could REALLY use an upgrade, but i don't have the money, so i just do what i can with the computer.

A Mac Pro will last you for a good long time, but it all depends on how much you demand of it. If you are doing high end, professional video editing, it will show its age MUCH more quickly, but if it is just basic stuff, then it will last a while

 

[Mr.damien]

Six years?

Six years ago in early 2001 the AMD Athlon "Thunderbird" 1.3Mhz and Intel 1.7Mhz P4's were state of the art running the latest and greatest PC133 SDRAM RAM and considered to be highly "upgradeable" by their owners.

Well, my powerbook 15" run flawlessly and will run Leopard flawlessly too.
And the processor is many years old (G4 1,5Ghz).
So it will at least have a longevity of 4 years. And that's on a laptop which is not upgradeable. So a Mac Pro should have a longer life.

 

[product26]

As far as the longevity goes, think of it this way. There are few applications on the market that can handle 4 cores, 2 if you are lucky. So in reality you are only using 25-50% of your computers processing capacity. It will take time for more and more programs become multi-core/processor aware, all the while your mac pro has not yet begun to show its full potential.

That alone is a HUGE glimpse at the longevity of the mac pro.

not to mention the soon to be released 8 core mac pro.... and the fact that the current mac pros can handle the dual quad core processors. there is also plenty of headroom for memory and storage.

buy a mac pro, you should be good for a while (pretty darn good considering how disposable the computer market has become)

 

[Chimpy]

I just bought a G4 Cube - 450Mhz, 1.5GB RAM. I'm used to screaming fast machines, but I have to tell you, I have no problems whatsoever surfing, writing documents, etc. on that machine. Sure, it's not going to be my main machine, but I don't mind working on it for light computing tasks at all, which is rare for a machine that came out in 2000 or so. A PC from that era would feel dog slow.

One of the reasons I bought a Mac Pro is because I suspect it will hold up very, very well.

 

[volvoben]

I'll have to agree that 6 years is probably a good estimate if you're not doing video or heavy graphics. Even heavy graphics work might give you 4 years of good service, there are plenty of pros using early G5 powermacs today.

macs stand time well, but one large part of the picture is that PCs can last well too, but windows bogs down severely over time. OS X doesn't slow down nearly as much, and while new versions of windows require loads more power, OS X hasn't gotten any slower over time, it needs a bit more memory but that's upgradeable.

Macs hold value better because it's a closed market, not because they're inherently superior...but that might play a part too.

My parents thought they needed a new pc because theirs was so terribly slow, but i reformatted it for the first time in 6 years and now they think it's great. My 2000 PIII 733 box still runs fine with XP as a download box, and I even use it as my main computer when my girlfriend's on the iMac.

 

[Multimedia]

Congratulations Kevin and Welcome!

So I just picked up the 2.66 GHz Mac Pro and was wondering if I could ask the Mac experts here.....

....what do you think the life expectancy is of this Mac Pro?

With all it's expandability, I figure this machine will last a long time. I don't plan on using it for major pro video editing or anything....more for home video/photo, web development, and general use.

The seemingly endless ability to upgrade HD and Memory seems like it will fit my needs for a long time. I guess the biggest issue is processing power. I'm guessing the Dual Intel processors are way ahead of most regular PC's out there today, right?

I'm a lifelong PC user....and wasn't looking forward to upgrading all my hardware just for Vista, so I went with a Mac Pro.

Good choice and congrats. I think you bought a Mac that can last you for as long as you want to keep it. I have a Quad G5 that I plan on keeping for the rest of my life. And when I get my 8 Core Mac Pro I expect to keep it for the rest of my life as well. These computers have passed a certain threshold of power capacity that make them almost impossible to call "obsolete" in terms of their fundamental usefulness for a lot of tasks.

But for some tasks they are still truely slow. Takes way too long to crush video on Quad Core Macs and that will still be true for the Oct Core Mac Pro as well. So when you get down to task specific looking, they are obsolete from the day they ship. And I'm sure I will buy the first 16 core Mac Pro as well and the first 32 core Mac Pro too. When we can crush big video files from 5GB to 350MB in a couple of minutes instead of several hours, I'll be satisfied. But we still have several years to go before that dream will become reality.

Anyway you made a brilliant decision to switch to Mac and your choice of the 2.66GHz Quad Mac Pro was also brilliant. Hope you'll get Leopard for it when it ships. Have fun!

 

[BobtheTomato]

Well my Radius System 100 (with the uber Radius Thunder 24 NUBUS card) still works fine but is in the closet. No one wants to use it. I'm sure Sonnet will have a G5 upgrade for it soon!

 

[zap2]

A while...however come 2 years, it will be middle to low end of the road. I'd expect Mac Mini to get 4 core chips in 2 years...maybe less!

However that said the Mac Pro will still be fast, and have room for upgrade, it will be fine, just like my iBook G4 is fine for what I do, but the faster the better,right? Thats why I go middle to low end stuff, but update quickly. I can't buy a Mac Pro each year, but I can buy a Mac Mini each year(so far the "updates" the Mac Mini got did make me want a new one, not that I currently have the money anyway )

Point is you Mac Pro will be fine for the next 5ish years, but it won't be top of the line. Infact the lowest end PC should be as good as it in 5 years.

 

[ivnj]

Actually 8 core has arrived in the PROs finally.

http://www.apple.com/macpro/

Thanks,
ivnj