With a monitor you'll be burning 250 watts just to surf the web. Seems slightly overkill for me. Get an iPad mini, save your bills and do your bit for the planet.
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Worth buying a 2006 Mac Pro for basic surfing etc now?
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Scrumpymac are a bit of a rip-off merchant judging by their prices. I paid £270 for mine which came with HD 5770 graphics and 5gb of memory. I use Snow Leopard and i love it..
I have a 1,1 2006 Mac Pro, and it still gets used every day. It runs Aperture and Photoshop well, as well as being used as general use computer. However I would not recommend buying one as it is stuck on 10.7, and more and more software is being released for 10.8. For example I can't put the new version of Motion on there. As others have suggested a Mac Mini would be a more sensible choice. When the new iMacs are released my trusty old Mac Pro is going to be retired.
Yep, that may be what I do with it, although is takes up a lot of space and is not very energy efficient. I can almost feel the polar ice caps melt every time i use it.
Hi, I want to buy a 2006 Mac Pro; is this a good deal?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SCRUMPYMA...mputing_Apple_Desktops_CV&hash=item4611d8dbc4
It will be used for basic web surfing etc.
Thanks.
Here's one with more for cheaper in the same local:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Apple-Mac...mputing_Apple_Desktops_CV&hash=item3a83b6f5fd
It's at £279.00 with 20min. left on the clock (and finished while I was writing this at £290.99). If the machines go for about the same there as they do in Japan and the USA then I'd say £200.00 is a "good deal" for that listed machine. £250.00 is prolly average and £300.00 is high.
I'm using the same machine as my desktop everyday beater and it's great!
- Web surfing is the same speed as the newest 2012 MP (with a 2.4GHz 6-Core Xeon)
- Heavy professional grade (studio level) music creation from scoring to mastering is also close to the same as the newest 2012 MP. You might be limited to the number of synthesizers you add to the arrangement tho. With none or only a few synths the speed is virtually identical with the 2012 MP tho.
- Photoshop is just as responsive and snappy on the MP1,1 as it is on the newest 2012 MP but some heavier tools for example, might take 1min. to complete on the MP1,1 where it could finish in 15sec. on the newest 2012MP. If you drop in a pair of $100 x5365 processors and it'll finish up in 30sec and if you add 16GB or more of ram for another $100 then the MP1,1 will finish up 20sec. instead of 1min. So pretty close to the newest MP 2012 if it had a 2.4GHz 6-Core Xeon in it.
- Apps like iPhoto are about the same on the 2012 as the MP1,1. Although in either of those importing or exporting large libraries will be slower on the MP1,1. Not too bad tho. Dedicated image editors like CaptureOne Pro or LightRoom are slower when using the editing tools but load and display is about the same as the 2012MP - extremely close.
- You can edit simple 1080p video on it without too much trouble but will be kinda choppy and laggy. You'll want to add a $100 video card (something like the GTX 570 - mine cost me $90) if you do much of that. But if you don't do too much too often then the basic MP1,1 config is pretty ok-ish. It works anyway. For video the newer 2012 mentioned will be more than twice as fast. Maybe 2.5 or 3 times faster depending on what GPU(s) are installed. Also some video editors are much faster than Adobe apps so in some of them 1080p isn't choppy or laggy at all on the MP1,1.
- About 80% of all the games available in native OS X will be playable at 24 to 80 FPS. With a $50 video card replacement to something like the 8800GT, that changes to 95% and with that $100 GTX570 it goes to 100% (currently). Performance will improve somewhat if you use bootcamp but there are more and heavier games available for windows so the percentages change too.
- Drive I/O speed is near or exactly identical between the MP1,1 and the fastest newest most expensive 2012 MP - including if you use an SSD. If you do add an SSD as a boot drive then the machine will boot in under 15sec. with 10.7.5 whereas a single fast HDD takes about 45sec or 55sec. The new 2012 MPs actually seem to take longer to boot than the MP1,1 (by like 5 to 10sec.).
- 3D like in LightWave3D, Cheetah3D, or 3Ds Max is fast enough to accomplish most personal projects without a lot of pain. Editing the scenes and models is very close to the same speed as on the newest fastest most expensive MP 2012 - you wouldn't notice any difference unless your models and maps are massive and then the newer machines pull ahead a little bit - not really that much tho. Rendering personal level projects or for learning is as I say, fast enough to not be painful. If you upgrade to a pair of x5355 or x5365 chips then rendering will be 2x faster or 2.5x faster respectively but scene and model editing won't change noticeably. And the 7300GT is fine for all of this. Some real-time previewers need CUDA or OpenCL cores so you're back to needing something like a GTX570 if you want that functionality.
- Text, html, and Page Layout apps are fast enough on the stock MP1,1 to very comfortably create largish web-sits, layout a 1,000 page manual with heavy graphics on every page and etc.. Ya might need more RAM for the 1000 page manual mentioned tho.
- Application development is OK-ish for massive projects but you'll want something more if you do this on a daily basis. It's awesome for learning or writing apps for iOS and Android. Plenty fast enough! Including emulation and remote control in either direction.
- Doing stuff like CD and DVD ripping are pretty fast. I guess it takes 20min on the machine you listed to rip a 2hr movie into an MP4 depending on settings - almost half that long if you copy the VOD files to HDD first. A 3min CD track takes about 6sec to mash into an MP3 256k. Not too painful. A 50min CD with 14 tracks takes 2min to rip into MP3 256k 44.1kHz - including the Album Art auto-downloading. Not too bad for £250.00 to £290.00 I reckon. Plenty good enough for casual use.
And so on and so forth like that.
Notes:
1) Unless otherwise noted "newest 2012MP" is equal to the MP5,1 with a single 2.4GHz 6-Core Xeon and the same amount of RAM as whatever you end up buying.
2) Using an SSD will speed most things up considerably.
3) Adding RAM will speed up almost everything noticeably. 24GB seems to be the sweet spot and that's about $200.
4) Adding more cores (8) with the x5355 or x5365 with speed up some stuff but less then you might think. Maybe 15% of the operations outlined above will be twice as fast.
5) Adding a GPU like the GTX570 won't do much. It's help with games and video editing and that's about it.
6) The multitasking in 10.7.5 on a 4-core is good enough you could do thinks like rip a CD, convert a 2hr movie VOB to MP4, and edit a large Photoshop image all at the same time with almost no slow down.
2) Using an SSD will speed most things up considerably.
3) Adding RAM will speed up almost everything noticeably. 24GB seems to be the sweet spot and that's about $200.
4) Adding more cores (8) with the x5355 or x5365 with speed up some stuff but less then you might think. Maybe 15% of the operations outlined above will be twice as fast.
5) Adding a GPU like the GTX570 won't do much. It's help with games and video editing and that's about it.
6) The multitasking in 10.7.5 on a 4-core is good enough you could do thinks like rip a CD, convert a 2hr movie VOB to MP4, and edit a large Photoshop image all at the same time with almost no slow down.
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With a simple bootstrap utility both 10.8.x and 10.9.x can be installed and run on the MP1,1 - so no problems there.
^^^^It's really not so simple. Many folks have problems with this method and it's certainly not optimal for system performance. My wife's iMac is a 32 bit machine, and I'm leaving her at OS 10.7.5. For what she does, it's fine for her.
IMHO, it is best for any type of power user to use a true 64 bit Macintosh and not kludge a 32 bit machine.
Lou
IMHO, it is best for any type of power user to use a true 64 bit Macintosh and not kludge a 32 bit machine.
Lou
OP,
I have no idea of what the price levels are in the UK, but ...
If you really want a MP, and want to start out cheap, while adding oomph (GFX, RAM, SSD) later, this might not be the worst place to start.
Folks, how often do you see a 5+ years old computer offered with a one-year warranty (albeit RTB)?
RGDS,
If you are a tinker, I would go on a limb and say YES. Excellent 10.6.8 machine.Hi, I want to buy a 2006 Mac Pro; is this a good deal?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SCRUMPYMA...mputing_Apple_Desktops_CV&hash=item4611d8dbc4
It will be used for basic web surfing etc.
Thanks.
for me, going to buy the new mp. old mp is where the finished jobs go, so it will only be on part of the time
If 10.6.8 going to be an excellent web surfering OS in 2-3 years?
10.9 likely means the end of 10.6.8 security updates.
As a time capsule configuration detached from the Internet, fine. But the internet is not a stagnant time capsule. Quite the opposite. Highly dynamic and fluid.
I happen to like my 2006 Mac Pro 1,1. I have it hooked up to my 65" Mitsubishi HDTV and I have sound using the digital optical out line to my Denon 7.1 Home theater. I play games on it, surf the Web, watch movies, and I use this visualization program called G-Force. So I just load up iTunes and watch my music! It's plenty quick and for what I listed it being used for it's perfectly fine. It's not my only Mac or my only Apple Product and being stuck on 10.7, with this machine isn't getting me down at all. Yeah it's not a 3,1 or better but it rocks in my book and I'm happy. If you want it, get it.
^^^^Yea, I understand your happy and that's great. But the question I have for you is:
If you were the OP, and buying a machine today for the purposes the OP said he wanted it for. Would you buy a Mac Pro 1,1, or something else that was maybe a little smaller and more powerful and probably less expensive?
Lou
If you were the OP, and buying a machine today for the purposes the OP said he wanted it for. Would you buy a Mac Pro 1,1, or something else that was maybe a little smaller and more powerful and probably less expensive?
Lou
Point taken.
That's not what the OP is asking but in my case I would answer a resounding yes to the MP1,1 base config for about $400. The next step up is the MP 3,1 for about $800 (occasionally but seldom seen for $700 + shipping) and it's not really faster - a tad in some benchmarks but in the real world for his stated purpose, nope, nada. And if he goes to upgrade the RAM he'll find it's almost two times the price as RAM for the MP1,1.
32GB for MP1,1 $275.
32GB for MP3,1 $500
If OS X 10.8 or 10.9 becomes an issue at some point bootstrapping a MP1,1 is stable and works without a problem in every configuration I've seen. Maybe the wife's iMac or Mini is a different story, I dunno - I never looked into boot-loader behavior on another machine besides the MP1,1 <shrug>
It will be used for basic web surfing etc.
You have a very different definition of basic web surfing than I do!
You have a very different definition of basic web surfing than I do!
Hehe, well the OS itself speeds up a lot at 24GB and over (as compared to 4GB or something). The last bit of OS thumb-twiddling is eliminated at 24GB by my tests. And actually with safari it's pretty easy to fill 8GB with just a few hours of aggressive browsing. When I'm researching and cross-referencing with 60 or 80 tabs between 6 or 8 windows, a few chats, Skype, and a handful of Previewer windows I can go past 12GB before I even know it - if I have the cache and paging set for speed.
Even a page as simple as this can add about 100MB per 5min. of browsing:
http://www.getdpi.com/forum/4-3rds-cameras/4390-fun-4-3rds-cameras-image-thread-116.html
And then who's to say he will never want to get into Photoshop or some other memory hog application?
Please read where I said "And if he goes to upgrade the RAM..." not "he will need 32GB for web browsing..." Duh.
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It's anyone's guess. I don't see Safari being updated hardly at all, but Firefox will probably be for a good while. And the fact that OS X is typically not targeted for malware helps out.
Chances are if malware is developed, it would exploit a feature on a new OS and not have the time invested to compromise an older on.
Don't bet on that.
" ... Firefox requires an Intel processor and Mac OS X 10.5 or above up to Firefox 16, Mac OS X 10.6 or above from Firefox 17. See all System Requirements. If you use an old Mac OS version, see Firefox no longer works with Mac OS X 10.4 or PowerPC processors or Firefox no longer works with Mac OS X 10.5 for help. ... "
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-mac
Firefox doesn't live in the past forever. If look at the systems requirements part for Mac... Currently it is.
"...
Operating Systems
Mac OS X 10.6
Mac OS X 10.7
Mac OS X 10.8
...."
A span of 3. Which is exactly what I'm pointing out. When Apple adds 10.9 the span from 10.6-10.9 is going to be 4 inclusive of both of those endpoints. By the time 10.10 comes that is 5.
There is not alot of good rational behind patching up apps on top of an OS that has been desupported. If closing the hole involves getting from cooperation from the OS libraries then that is a dead end. Teams with resources to blow away (or a cadre of stuck in time volunteers ) eventually those folks will be forked off it they remain still ( e.g., TenFour fox ).
Actually not. Most malware is targeted at already researched and available holes. (i.e, there is a larger group exploiting the holes than in trying to find new ones). Those are much more often in older systems. Especially those not getting patches.