Thought process on choosing future system

[Varmann]

I have never been more in doubt about what system to go for next!

I started out in the 80´s with DOS 3.2. After that I have probably used every (common) Dos and Windows system, every major Mac OS system since the last system 6, Linux since 1.2, plus OS/2, IRIX and Solaris, most of them both for work and home. I built five pretty advanced PCs in the early 2000´s.

I got my "best ever" computer in 2008, a MacPro at the time MacOS seemed to set pride in being most compatible with everything else. That one has faithfully served my since.

OS:
I have no problems with different OSes, they all have their quirks but I have liked OSX a lot.
I took a look at my normal use vs different future systems:

Lightroom: OSX or Win, probably not much difference

Watching movies: One of my main interests. I have ripped all my 1500 DVD/BR (took about 1,5 year with 100% load) and put into DVDpedia´s nice database UI. I have not seen anything remotely as nice and I do not want to put everything manually in once more somewhere else.

Email: Since I like to have all my 25 years of email in one place (at home) I certainly do not want to change systems. I have made three changes, Eudora (mac) to Eudora (pc) to Thunderbird (pc) to Mail (mac). The last one was a terrible nightmare I do not want to repeat.

Browsing internet, writing stuff, listen to music: Almost OS independent

Cross platform use: Hard to say, separate computers might be better

Play games: Guess Win have an edge her

HARDWARE
Hard to say, I like some of the Apple stuff a lot, especially MacPro classic and some of the laptops, but the flexibility is probably greatest on the pc side. I do want something smaller than today so two normal size desktops are out of question

I after my huge movie ripping undertaking ten years ago my hardware needs today are more modest.

WHAT TO GET? (total budget about $5000, all included)
- Next (modular) MacPro: Probably a lot overkill and I am not looking forward to Mac/OSX being more and more of a gated community

- PC (decent midprize workstation): Moving film database and email is certainly not something I look forward to.

- Imac/Macmini: I want a bigger display than Imac has (40"+), but a mini with eGPU might be one possibility combined with something else.

- Two laptops: PC (Win gaming + Linux) and Macbook Pro (Movie + Email). I guess this might be the final solution, but the current MacbookPro generation does seem to be the best one.

I have absolutely not made up my mind yet.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Mac mini sounds perfect for your movie library. I use a 2011/2012 vintage mac mini server attached to an OWC Thunderbay 4. It serves ~18TB throughout the house without problems.

Still working on a fully functional Z820 Hackintosh - experimenting with ESXi now.

 

[Varmann]

Thanks a lot!
I guess the mac part will be handled well be either a mini or a mac laptop (it is sometimes nice with something mobile). Then probably complement it with not too fancy pc-laptop for gaming (my games are far from bleeding edge) and linux.
But try to keep the road for future eGPU expansion open.

The things I will probably miss is the amazing longliveness by my current system. It still does handle all my things nicely since my CPU/disk/memory requirements have not changed much the last decade.

I remember struggling a lot in the beginning (2008-10) to get a system that could handle >20TB with backups, do linux and windows and integrate it with my sound system, an external sound card, cable TV, two speaker sets in different rooms, two displays + a projector. But today my goal is to gradually scale down since many things are a bit easier to get together now.

I might wait until WWDC, just to see if a new MacPro will surface.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

I'll let you know how my ESXi experiment goes. Used HP Z820s & 840s are cheap - a single 20 core box running everything bare metal could fulfill all your needs. I still like having a dedicated box for the Plex server though.

 

[mattspace]

I'll let you know how my ESXi experiment goes. Used HP Z820s & 840s are cheap - a single 20 core box running everything bare metal could fulfill all your needs. I still like having a dedicated box for the Plex server though.

Given how cheap RAM is now (for cMPs), I'm pondering VMs more and more (especially for keeping old software going) - so with ESXi, you then have the VMware product itself running the hardware? How is the performance of the guest OS' in the VMs? Could a virtualised macOS install (needs to be a hackintosh install?) still use the wifi / bluetooth hardware to do airdrop etc, or do 3D apps suffer much in terms of GPU resource access?

I'd put a suggestion to the MOSR forum admins for a dedicated virtualisation subforum, but the person I mentioned it to didn't think there'd be much call for it, but there really isn't a good resource I've found that covers all the options for guest / host combos.