I was sitting in my office the other day, working away on my MacBook Pro. Let it be known that I love my setup. 15″ MBP with a 23″ cinema display leaves me in dual monitor heaven… However, I got to thinking, man, I wish I had a pimped out Mac Pro to take things to the next level.

As you may or may not know, I do a lot of web and print design… and it is not uncommon for me to have Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, a few FTP programs, my handy newsreader, and about 24 Firefox tabs opened at the same time. While my MBP performs beautifully, the thought of a brand new Mac Pro makes my arms numb, and it’s not because of the fatty foods I’ve been eating recently.

‘Well, lets go check it out’ I thought… and off I went to price out an ideal Mac Pro for me. I didn’t want anything too crazy, just something that could perform to the level I needed. I would of course have to pick up another display to keep my ‘duelies’ going. Lets see what I chose and what the pricetag was!

Ok, lets head to Apple, click on Store, Mac Pro starting at $2799… Ok I’m there. Now lets configure this bad boy:

1. Processor: I’ll be needing Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core) ($800 upgrade)
2. Memory: 4GB should do me nicely ($500 upgrade). Stock is 2GB, and you can upgrade all the way up to 32GB for another $8600!!! Why must memory be so darn expensive through Apple?
3. RAID Card: Yep, I’ll take one of those. ($800 upgrade)
4. Hard Drives: Well, lets get 2. One main drive and another used for storage and backup. Lets upgrade the first to 500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s (a $50 upgrade) and ditto for the second drive as well. I should note, on a Mac Pro there are 4 hard drive bays.
5. Graphics Card: Ok, things are starting to get a bit pricy, but I’ve got to go with the mid-road 3 x ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB ($260 upgrade).
6. Displays: Yep, I’ll need an extra 23″ Apple Cinema Display ($899 upgrade). Already have another 23″ here in the office.
7. Extra Optical Drive: Nah, I don’t do a lot of burning, think I’ll leave this one out.
8. Airport Extreme Card: Yep ($50 upgrade).
9. Software and Extras: Fibre Channel Card, modem, Mighty Mouse, Keyboard, OS X Server, plus all of the other software up for offer… I think I’ll pass.
10. Apple Care Protection Plan: Lets leave this out for now. I can always purchase it at a later date ($249 upgrade).

So what’s the damage? $5,558 USD. Expensive!!! If you subtract the monitor ($899) and RAID card ($800), the system all of a sudden comes in at a more respectable $3,859. Much better. Still expensive, but I would think manageable for those out there that are considering a serious step up in performance.

Anyone I’ve talked to that owns a Mac Pro swears by it. The system is lightning quick, solid, and extremely expandable and upgradeable. They are expensive, but in my books you get what you pay for. For the design professional that needs a solid in-house system, you can’t argue with the Mac Pro. For a design geek like myself that is often on the go, and needs the extra portability, you’ll have no problem getting by on a MacBook Pro… as long as you have a nice big monitor to go with it when you’re at your home base

I wish I could justify spending that amount at this time… While Apple does have business financing options, it’s not something I’d consider at this point, especially when you consider my system is running fine (knock on wood). Only bad thing is it does ‘chug’ from time to time when I get the spinning marble of doom.

So, are there any other Mac Pro users out there that have any advice for me? Keep what I’ve got going here? Or would you rather see me go ahead and drop the cash, take the leap, dive off the deep end?

Discuss in the Forums >

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: Dreamweaver, Graphics, Illustration, Illustrator, Mac Pro, Photoshop, Web Design

As some of you may or may not know, in my non-spare time, I work as a solicitor in the UK dealing with, amongst other things, IT and e-commerce matters. The overlap is a good thing to me because it allows me to indulge my love of all things tech and mix in a little law for good measure.

Now, it was never my intention to use this space to write about legal issues but, sometimes, you feel compelled to veer off down an unplanned path – this is one of those times. It all comes down to an email I received the other day about a study that had been carried out by Dotmailer into email marketing compliance (click here). But don’t click away just yet, this might get interesting!

Let me give you some background. There is a whole raft of rules and regulations on email marketing. They are designed to prevent spam emails (which clearly is less than effective) and also to protect consumers when trading online. The protective measures ensure that you are given a certain amount of information about the company that is sending you the email so that you can have some idea about who they are, where they are based, where they are registered* and so on. This is really basic information and should not be difficult for any company to provide.

Dotmailer sampled marketing emails from 46 companies and found that 21 were breaking the rules. And they weren’t tiny little one-man bands - amongst them were some massive household names such as Game, CD-WOW and Waterstone’s.

The consequences of breaching the rules are a fine of up to £1000 plus a further £300 per day that the contravention continues. But who is protecting you, the consumer, by enforcing the rules? Well, it seems like nobody is.

The fines are potentially small beer to the companies involved but more important to them will be the potential loss of customer confidence. I act for a number of companies, drawing up their terms of use, email footers and privacy policies and a good company will have these in place, giving you plenty of information that will protect you and them.

I am sure that the vast majority of companies mentioned in the report are doing great things for their customers but they should not be allowed to ignore rules that are designed to protect their customers. At the end of the day, it really does benefit both sides to have everything clearly set out.In the meantime, while waiting for someone to do something – anything - about this, my message to UK consumers wanting to buy things online is that you could do worse than go to the Trading Standards website here where you will find some useful information on your rights.

From the company’s side, I would ask that you consider what message you are sending out to your customers if you are not going to give this most basic information. There are thousands of companies out there that are willing to go that extra mile for their customers. If you are not happy to do the same, don’t be surprised if they go elsewhere – however big you are.

James Barisic

* I’m not going to give too many clues as to how this might be relevant to this site but one company we all know seems a little forgetful about putting company registration details on its UK marketing emails…

written by James Barisic \\ tags: consumer, distance selling, ecommerce, email, law, legal, protection

Hopefully people reading this know that technology moves at an amazing pace and accept that if one waits for the next great product (or version of a product), you’d never buy anything.

However, I and many others, have been on the receiving end of an “early-adopter penalty” when we’ve bought recent Apple products.

So, here’s my list of the recent Apple product releases that were improved with Version 2.

I’d be interested in any others that you can recall - either post in the comments or on the Forum.

Also, the list is a warning for all those buying Version 1 of the MacBook Air. Be ready for Version 2 in the autumn, with probably a 120GB or 160GB HDD, a 4GB RAM option, and a 128GB SSD upgrade - all in the same price range as the current 1st generation release. Don’t complain when this happens.

Also, as the MacBook Air is a completely new type of product, early adopters will be the beta testers for Apple. For that I must thank them and I look forward to the improvements they will help drive in Version 2.

Early Adopter Penalties

• 1st Version MacBook and MacBook Pro: didn’t come with 802.11n wireless (2nd generation allowed turning on 802.11n for $2).

• 1st Version Airport Extreme Base Station: didn’t come with gigabit ethernet.

• 1st Version Mac Mini: cheapest model only came with Intel Core Solo CPU.

• 1st Version iPhone: was $200 more for the first six weeks and buyers only got $100 Apple credit.

• 1st Version iPod Touch: didn’t come with iPhone features such as Maps, Mail, etc. Has cost early adopters $20 to get these applications added.

• 1st Version Apple TV: only came in a 40GB version (a 160GB soon followed that many, like myself, would have bought if they hadn’t already bought the 40GB).

I’ve not included in the list the iMac Intel transition, where some people were annoyed that an updated, slimmer PowerPC iMac came out in October 2005, only to be replaced in January 2006 with an Intel version.

Also, Apple’s recent memory upgrades to the iPhone and iPod Touch could be seen as a penalty to early adopters if they would have been willing to pay the additional cost for these units. Personally, I would not have paid for the 32GB iPod Touch, so don’t see the new version as a penalty - but I’m sure others may not be so accepting.

written by Mike Bradbrook \\ tags: Early Adopter

So, I’ve given Mac OS Ken Day 6 more than the one month I said I would before deciding whether to continue with my subscription.

My conclusion: Day 6 is not worth $10 per month and I’ve canceled my subscription.

Yes, if you like Ken Ray and want to support his endeavor and, more importantly, can afford to give him $120 a year, then that’s fine. However, Day 6 appears to be the same format show as one of his previous podcasts, Technocracy Radio. That show used to be free.

On the first six shows, while there were interesting interviews with tech people, I didn’t feel each show was worth $2.50. For instance, one show was Ken interviewing his friend (and Mac developer) August Trometer. While August did a great job of predicting what Apple would release at Macworld, I didn’t feel it should cost me $2.50, especially as there were so many other podcasters doing predictions for free on their shows.

Ken can try and argue that you are actually paying for six shows each week, but as everyone else gets Monday to Friday shows free, the only extra material you get for your money is one 30-40 minute show each week.

Also, a complaint: while I’ve just canceled my subscription and have already paid my $10 for the second month’s content, my subscription has been canceled immediately, so I cannot get episodes 7 and 8, which I have paid for!

So, has anyone else subscribed (or canceled their subscription) to Day 6?

written by Mike Bradbrook \\ tags: Mac OS Ken, Podcasts

I am the most anal-retentive Mac-junkie you may ever meet, one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone touches my MacBook monitor with their finger and leaves a greasy smudge! Don’t worry, I recognize that this is just a petty issue and I normally don’t even mention it to the perpetrator. But there is a much bigger elephant in the room: using Lime Wire or, for that matter, ANY illegal downloading software. Nothing gets me more upset than seeing a beautiful, expensive, state of the art piece of machinery being destroyed by illegal software!

Since the first time I was screwed by the monster’s grandfather, Napster, I have always loathed music downloading software. All it brings is problems! I watched it eat away at my old Dell machine years ago and even today, I see the same thing happening to my friends. To boot, they don’t even seem to care! When I try to explain it to them all I hear is cries of, “Oh no, it won’t happen to me” and “I only download it for a couple hours every few weeks and then delete it right after.”

When you download files through this type of freeware, you are directly accessing the files from someone else’s computer. What most users don’t realize is that hundreds of other people are doing the same to their own computer; remotely accessing it without their knowledge or consent. Therefore the firewalls are non-existent and absolutely nothing lies between them and evil-minded hackers.

So please, this is my cry to all Mac users out there: DO NOT USE ILLEGAL DOWNLOADING SOFTWARE! It will literally eat away at your computer for months without you realizing. I’m not saying that it all hits in one day; it’s actually a very gradual process. I saw it happen to my cousin’s MacBook Pro, she never listened to me. It all began with minor start up issues, such as extended blue screen and then it progressed until her computer wouldn’t even turn on. In the end, she gave up, leaving her once great, MacBook Pro to gather dust in the corner and began using her desktop again. I simply don’t understand how anyone can let their computer fall to the wayside for a couple free songs.

This isn’t the end and I don’t come empty handed, I have a solution! You can purchase, for a nominal fee, iPod backup software that is completely safe. Whenever one of your friends comes by, plug in their iPod and take all the songs you like! So easy a caveman could do it! Even my boyfriend, after a few weeks, had already accumulated 6,000 songs. And if you don’t have any friends with good music on their iPods, well, then I guess you’re out of luck. But at least your computer will still be working 4 months from now.

Don’t even get my started on Jailbreaker for iPhone…

written by Simone Renee \\ tags: Acquisition, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, Jailbreak, Napster

Last week, Mr. Jobs was being interviewed by CNBC’s Jim Goldman when he was asked about the threat posed to the iPod by the Vole’s famous mp3 player, the Zune.

His response was to ask ‘Do you even know anyone who owns a Zune?’

Well, I’d like to say that I do, so there! And they love it. They say that it’s brilliant. It works excellently, is stylish, the sound is incredible and the battery life is out of this world.

I’d like to say all of that.

The thing is, I know a lot of people who really like Microsoft’s products. Real Microsoft fans. We tend not to stay in the same room for longer than entirely possible - they just end up getting too defensive.

Well, the thing is… it’s like this…

I don’t really know anybody with a Zune. I’m sure I probably do. Statistically, I must. Or, at least, I know someone who knows someone who has a Zune. Maybe. My LinkedIn network has lots of people on it - almost 2.5 million at the third degree (friends of friends of friends - or something). Some of those on the second degree work for Microsoft for crying out loud. One of them must have a Zune. I’m sure that walking around the Richmond campus listening to your iPod would be a hanging offence. So they must have a Zune.But the thing is, nobody has actually told me about it.

You know the way that your friends who have an iPhone or an iPod Touch or even just a new iPod, you know the way they ‘let you know’? That’s never happened to me with the Zune. Which is a little odd because someone must have one. And someone must like them.

Actually, I want the Zune to be good - well, better than it is now. I want it to be an innovative product. Something that stretches the boundaries of what we expect from a media player. I want some competition from Microsoft. Actually, it can come from anyone but they seem to have the most money to throw at this one.

The Zune being fundamentally unloved and, let’s assume, a bit useless is not good for Apple or for us as end users. Apple could become complacent. The iPod could become flabby. Anything could happen.

By buying something that has been panned and ridiculed, Zune owners are standing up for competition and the improvement of media players for us all. It’s exactly the same process that has led to Mac OSX being so much better than Windows Vista - except that at all stages, Apple got there first and did it better.

So, if you see or hear of anyone with a Zune, don’t mock them. Instead take a photo and keep it safe - as a constant reminder of what could have been.

written by James Barisic \\ tags: Apple, iPod, Microsoft, Steve Jobs, Zune