new to mac pro's looking at one on CL

[espiritujo]

So I've been debating on whether or not to purchase a mac pro. Granted, I will be purchasing this used, I decided to look around online and I stumbled on this ad on Craigslist near my area.


2.7 Ghz. processor
2 gigs of ram
8 ram slots, expandable to16 gigs
400 Gig 7200 RPM Fast Hard Drive
Room for another full size 3.5" SATA Hard Drive inside tower
Dual Layer SuperDrive, burns everything
Dual DVI Video card, can run 2 monitors at once
USB 2.0 ports x3
Firewire 400 port x2
Firewire 800 port x1
10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet
Sound in port
Sound out port

And the price: only 200$. My question is, is this a good bargain? Are Mac Pro's easy to upgrade, and what would I be looking at upgrading? And how much would these upgrades cost to be running parallel to a Mac pro that is a year or two old?

 

[TableSyrup]

that is not a mac pro, it's a G5

limited to OS 10.5.8 - NonIntel applications

'Obsoleted' machine

that said, it has it's purpose, and $200 is fair if it does what you need and you are not concerned with upgrades

 

[espiritujo]

man..... thought I had something going good for me.. It still seems like a good deal.. He listed that on the mac it comes with the master collection of CS4 and aperture, despite how old both version of it is. Still seems like it could be handy.. I'll probably just save my money until I see another good computer.

 

[thekev]

He listed that on the mac it comes with the master collection of CS4 and aperture,

Yeah yeah... pre-installed pirated software. It's common. He doesn't have a legal right to sell it to you, so your chances of getting it installed again if a drive crashes are basically zero. It's not even that good of a deal. Beyond that the older mac pros won't run nearly as fast as the newer ones. You could get somewhat close on a 1,1 to the current base quad if you upgraded it to an 8 core assuming that your software stresses 8 cores effectively (most of it either doesn't or stresses them on a limited number of functions). Even then it's past its supported life, the gpu would still suck. The ram for the 1,1 through 3,1 is expensive. Ideally get a 4,1 or later given that they're still using that logic board and the firmware can be updated to the current version. While I still don't expect them to support it forever, they're tied to this one a bit longer seeing as they still sell it.