Mac XP: ordering new stuff

As I already told you about in my previous blogentry, I need to replace my iMac 2 Gb with something heftier.

So the solution is to get a new Mac that allows me a lot more RAM and a number of internal fast diskchannels. If I can place the Parallels images on one or two secondary disks, leaving just the OSX on my primary, I think I can avoid having the system thrash. There’s only one model that can do all this and that’s the Mac Pro. (Yes, I know recent iMacs can take 4 Gb of RAM but that’s not really enough. The single disk limitation also remains.)

So I went to the Swedish Apple store and configured up one, looked at the sticker and broke out in a sweat. With 4 x 500 Gb drives and 8 Gb of RAM and 2 x 23 inch monitors, I’m out around 50800 SEK, before VAT. Ouch.

There has to be another way. Especially that RAM seems ridiculously expensive. So the first item on the agenda is to find cheaper RAM, and while I’m at it, drives.

Surfing around, looking for good and bad experiences in the newsgroups, I came to the conclusion that Other World Computing (OWC) had a pretty good rep. Checking out their site I noticed they weren’t averse to international shipping. Some people in newsgroups recommended using Fedex, since UPS has a bad habit of crushing boxes, it seems. So Fedex it’ll be.

The Mac Pro, latest version, uses memory with pretty special cooling requirements and if you don’t want the fans in the tower to spin too fast and make howling noises, you’d better get memory with these extra large fins.

For the drives, I chose the Seagates, since according to spec they’re the least noisy.

Add to that Fedex shipping and the total is:

Not bad, not bad at all. The price for the Mac Pro with minimum RAM (2 Gb) and one 320 Gb drive is still 34500 SEK without VAT or thereabouts. What more can be done?

Well, I’m a developer, and Apple is kind to developers, so I checked out the ADC Select membership and ordered it:

Except for DVDs with developer tools, access to a lot of training, extra technical developer support and stuff, you also get a reduction on one hardware purchase per year and, not least, a t-shirt. That t-shirt clinched it.

With the ADC Select reduction applied, the Mac Pro without the extra RAM and disks came to 28885 SEK. Now we’re talking. Which means that the ADC Select reduction exceeds the price of ADC Select itself. The only requirement is that you don’t sell the hardware within a year and that you use it for development for the Apple platform, which is exactly what I do. I suspect that I even get access to OSX Server this way, except I haven’t really located it yet.

None of all this has arrived yet, but various status reports and phonecalls back and forth indicate that today may be the day for both shipments.

As always, stay tuned for further developments.