Now: Mac mini G4 1.42GHz; three aging, slow and increasingly crippled Windows PCs
What: Mac Pro (mid-range, whatever that is when I get it; at *least* 4GB RAM for running two bloated-ass operating systems simultaneously with massive multitasking; 4 or more cores for the same reason; hopefully a faster-than-7200 RPM main HDD with Leopard and Vista installed; Parallels; remaining three drives made into a RAID set of the largest capacity drives available; 30" Cinema Display; Optimus keyboard if that's out by then)
When: mid-late 2007 at the earliest, possibly 2008, no later than 2009. The following have to happen first:
- Leopard needs to have been out long enough to determine how well it will run on my underpowered Mini, and also, to shake out the bugs (as was required with Tiger -- 10.4.2 was the first really usable version), and make sure compatibility with all the main programs I use is there. If Leopard bogs things down too much, an imminent upgrade will be necessary; if it runs ok, I may stick it out awhile longer. I *am* quite fond of my Mini despite its underpoweredness
- The same applies to Vista; at the very least, it needs to be relatively stable and be able to run my exisiting programs. Heh, we'll see, this might force me to stick it out longer as well.. the reason I'm waiting for Vista is I don't want to have to buy a copy of XP only to upgrade shortly thereafter.
- Parallels should support real (not just virtual) hard drives, CD/DVD burning, 3D graphics, and of course, Vista
- BluRay drives should be available for massive archiving
I'd also like to see the following before I upgrade, but none are really necessary:
- Cinema Displays upgraded with iSight and IR receiver for Apple Remote
- Seagate introduces drives with capacities greater than 750GB (1TB? more?)
- Apple offers 10,000 RPM drives as a BTO option for the Mac Pro as they did with the XServe
Why: I've always had low-end computers, even at work -- except for the XServe, which, when I use the desktop interface, feels unbelievably fast compared to everything else I've used (too bad it's dedicated to server stuff and I'm stuck with an old G4 as a workstation). I am a heavy duty multitasker and becoming moreso all the time, and though distributing my activities across four low-end pooters has worked ok so far, these old single-core, limited-RAM, PIII-and-G4-era consumer machines with crappy and unmodifiable graphics are just not going to cut it in the future, particularly with 2007's new operating systems. The Mini already feels bogged down, though still usable. I have no interest in mobile computing, and I want a choice of displays, and big ones; a choice of running both OS's at the same time because I use apps made for both; and the freedom to multitask to an extreme degree, made possible by multiple cores and vast quantities of RAM. A Mac Pro is the obvious, elegant answer. Also I want to keep all of my DVDs on a central server from which they can be viewed or streamed and I like the idea of them all being in a single massive contatenated RAID inside the tower.. and, I want this machine to last a loooong time.
