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New owner of a Mac Pro

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savesteve

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 6, 2007
20
0
Fremont, CA
Hi everyone, just wanted to say hello.

I've been holding for a while buying my machine but finally gave in yesterday and ordered it.

Just wanted to say I've been reading a lot of the great information you guys have contributed on this forum and am hoping to have a smooth transition from my PC to my new Mac next week when it arrives.

Little bit about the box and stuff I ordered:
Baseline Mac pro 2.6
Extra 2gb of Crucial RAM
extra 500gb WD RE2 WD5000YS
X1900XT Upgrade Kit (Picking this up from my local Apple store once I have the box) (I play my fair share of WoW :) )

Anyway I look forward to being a part of the community. Thanks again for all the great info shared on software/hardware.
 
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savesteve

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 6, 2007
20
0
Fremont, CA
miniConvert said:
You'll probably wind up at this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/278791/ :(
Click to expand...

Yes indeed, I'd actaully read that thread you started miniConvert. Good info. I was wondering actually if this could be combated with some fan management as it appears to be a heat based problem? I've just scratched the surface in that area of my mac knowledge(as far as the thermal zones inside the machine and control of the internal environment) so if that's a noob question I'm sorry. Looks like you guys have tried with limited success. We'll see how man is when it gets here.

Someone posted they had success correcting the issue with an external fan, but I'd say that's a less than optimal solution for me hehehe.

On a side note, as an avid PC WoW player I can tell you you're not alone in that arena. I actually had to replace a 6800GT in my windows box for this exact same type of issue while playing WoW. The cooler on my current 7950GT seems to do a much better job keeping things cool and smooth in WoW.

Maybe an aftermarket cooler on the X1900XT? I'll water cool that sucker if I have to, the WoW must flow :).
 
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oakland6

macrumors newbie
Apr 8, 2007
2
0
Hello I am new here, I just ordered my 8 core mac and will let you know my thoughts as soon as the box het here.
Also is there a website dedicated to professionals and there computers(macpros)? :) :)
 
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savesteve

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 6, 2007
20
0
Fremont, CA
It's here!!

So it arrived on Friday evening (7pm PST) and it has been great ever since. I think I've been glued to it the whole weekend :).

Installed all the hardware, including the X1900XT. Everything went off without a hitch.

I did have a little spot of trouble erasing the extra 500gb extra HD I got. It would hang at "preparing to erase" for some reason. I opted to have it 0 out the drive and then it appeared to erase and mount the drive just fine. Seemed a little weird to me but I played along.

Notes from my experience so far::

Better for me:
-Dual Monitor Support: I have a Dell 2407 and a Dell 1905(?) one of my major complaints with my XP box was that overlay acceleration wasn't supported on my second monitor. IE When I'm playing WoW on my main monitor and I want to watch a iTunes or Quicktime movie on the second monitor, the movie is being software rendered by my CPU rather than being processed by the GPU of my video card. This did HORRIBLE things to my framerate in WoW due to the contention for CPU resources. My Mac Pro however does not have this problem at all. It's movie / 2nd Copy of WoW bliss on the 2nd monitor :).

-Dashboard: I'm addicted like crack. I've got a few WoW widgets, and iStats Pro going.

-Dock: This thing is great. I love the jumping / magnifying effect :)

-Expose: My god how did I live without it all this time?

-WoW: WoW actually seems to have a smaller memory footprint in OS X. I don't know if this is just a function of how the client is coded or what, but it seems to work like butter on the X1900XT.

-iTunes,Quicktime: Just seem to work better on my Mac then they did on my PC. Of course I'm sure this is a function of them being Mac native applications :).


Tough for me:

-Mouse: I might just be used to my other mice, but I just can't get behind the mighty mouse. I was going to try it for a while and see if I liked it, but after about an hour I was 100% sure it wasn't going to work out. I might not be coordinated enough to use it. I kept miss left/right clicking, and I found the little scroll ball a little small for my hands. Anyway I swapped my Razor Habu in slapped on some USB Overdrive action and was once again a point/clicking machine.

-Keyboard: I list this here, but I do really like the keyboard. The only thing tough for me here is the lack of a space between "F1" and "Esc". That sounds like the stupidest thing ever right? For those that don't play WoW you probly won't understand but as a healer (not all healers do it this way) I'm constantly pushing F1-F5. Now I am not the most ninja skilled typist in the world, that said I just kind of throw my hand in the top-left direction of the KB to smack "F1". That doesn't really work when "Esc" is directly to the left of "F1" heheh. I'll get over it I just need some time :).

-Finder: Cut/Paste. In the Windows world I used to live in, you could select a bunch of stuff and then "Cut"-> Navigate to wherever you wanted to put the stuff->"Paste" this would move the files/folder you had selected rather than copy them. I am unable to figure out how to do this yet in the finder. It seems perfectly happy to "Copy" and and copy files/folder to a new location this way. I'm sure there is a way, I just haven't played around enough.

-Speakers: I'm sure you guys will laugh at this, but I wasn't quite understanding how the control panel for sound worked hehehe. I didn't realize that whatever I selected was what the Mac was actually going to use to spit out the sound. It's so much simpler than changing the sound output device in Windows, I didn't realize that's what it was doing :). Needless to say once I got my brain around the idea I got my external speakers working great :).

-"Line In" vs "Microphone In": This is pretty much me gimping out not reading what the port on the Mac is before I got it :). I'll be picking up a powered Mic for use with Vent.



All in all my switching experience has been very positive and I couldn't be happier with my Mac :).

I'll get some pics up as soon as I clean my desk up a little :).
 
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joachim

macrumors member
Apr 6, 2007
52
0
savesteve said:
-Finder: Cut/Paste. In the Windows world I used to live in, you could select a bunch of stuff and then "Cut"-> Navigate to wherever you wanted to put the stuff->"Paste" this would move the files/folder you had selected rather than copy them. I am unable to figure out how to do this yet in the finder. It seems perfectly happy to "Copy" and and copy files/folder to a new location this way. I'm sure there is a way, I just haven't played around enough.
Click to expand...

Congrats on your Mac! I'm still a Windows user for another couple months till I get back from my vacation, but I wanted to comment that the best possible way to get the most productivity out of your Mac is knowing the keyboard short-cuts. The command (or Apple) key is your friend. I find I can do so many things in Finder with a combination of the command key and a letter. In your case, cmd-x is to cut, cmd-c is to copy, and cmd-v is to paste.

As for the mouse, when I used the Mighty Mouse at my school's computer lab, I loved it (there are mixed reactions of course), but I remain skeptical. Even then, I'm gonna hang on to my Logitech MX510 until I'm absolutely certain I can get used to the Mighty Mouse.
 
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savesteve

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 6, 2007
20
0
Fremont, CA
joachim said:
Congrats on your Mac! I'm still a Windows user for another couple months till I get back from my vacation, but I wanted to comment that the best possible way to get the most productivity out of your Mac is knowing the keyboard short-cuts. The command (or Apple) key is your friend. I find I can do so many things in Finder with a combination of the command key and a letter. In your case, cmd-x is to cut, cmd-c is to copy, and cmd-v is to paste.

As for the mouse, when I used the Mighty Mouse at my school's computer lab, I loved it (there are mixed reactions of course), but I remain skeptical. Even then, I'm gonna hang on to my Logitech MX510 until I'm absolutely certain I can get used to the Mighty Mouse.
Click to expand...

I want to say I gave cmd-x a shot. I think I also tried straight from the edit menu? I'll give it another shot once I'm back at home to make sure heheh.
 
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joachim

macrumors member
Apr 6, 2007
52
0
savesteve said:
I want to say I gave cmd-x a shot. I think I also tried straight from the edit menu? I'll give it another shot once I'm back at home to make sure heheh.
Click to expand...

I used to do everything from the edit menu, but personally, I think the fastest and best way is to use the keyboard shortcuts. Not just cmd-x to cut, but you can do cmd-w to close a window, cmd-q to quit a program, cmd-a to select all, cmd-n for a new finder window. Adding combinations of option or shift keys does miscellaneous stuff which is really, really cool. One of my favorites is option-cmd-h to hide all finder windows but one. It might take getting used to, but once you get used to it, you're hooked for life.

Here's a list of other shortcuts: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459
 
Lord Flashheart

Lord Flashheart

macrumors regular
Apr 10, 2007
238
36
Cardiff by the Sea, CA
Get those pictures to us ASAP Must ... Have ... Mac... Porn :)

I will be getting a Mac Pro (don't need right away so I'm waiting for GPU upgrade) and I also play WoW. Glad you are enjoying. Watch out for overheating though.
 
decksnap

decksnap

macrumors 68040
Apr 11, 2003
3,075
84
unfortunately, apple + X doesn't work in the finder like it does in every other program. Just open two finder windows.
 
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