| Joined: | Mon Apr 2nd, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
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I haven't really given it any serious work yet but it feels very crisp and responsive.
It isn't a huge surprise that the Mac Pro is so superior to the Mac mini, which at the time was all I could afford, Mac pro's were very expensive then. What I hadn't realised was how upgradable the Mac pro 4.1's are. That was the game changer. I am accustomed to Mac CPU's being soldered in. It was an eBay seller who I bought the larger RAM from who raised my awareness of the really easy upgrade path to 5.1 spec and the option to add a faster 6 core CPU.
In real terms it isn't a bus ride from the performance of the current low end 6.1 Mac pro's with the added bonus that the earlier Mac pro's can house 6 SATA drives internally. That could become 48Tb of onboard storage with say a 250 or 500Gb ultra fast PCIe SS flash Drive in a PCIe slot for the OS and software. That would be an ultimate build for most photo processes with potentially more space than most users could ever need. I have 10Tb of disk storage, 6Tb of which consists of two 3Tb drives used for Time Machine backups. I intend to alternate the TM backups to an off site location.
The only thing I miss from the Mac mini is the SD card slot. I still use it to off-load my SD card images then I use the Mac mini as a remote server and move the images over to the Mac pro image data drive.
Another thing which triggered this reorganisation of the computers is that I have an old piece of software called Mac Project, which I used a lot back in the day when I was running largish construction projects. I could do with it now for my car projects to organise the sequence of tasks during a car build and for other smaller projects. It's a great aid for keeping the project on track and well organised.
I was somewhat devastated to discover that my old archive hard drive had become unreadable, the directory was apparently corrupt. I used Disk Warrior to recover most of the software and files, but I don't yet know if Mac Project has survived the recovery process. I think I have it on CD/DVD too but it would take a lot of finding.
Unfortunately there is no other project management software that I have found which compares with the ease of use which Mac Project has. However it only runs on OS9 or earlier. That requires a G3, G4 or perhaps a G5 Mac. I have a good G4 tower which I plan to get running soon. But that's getting somewhat off topic. Moral of story, keep more than one backup of important data! Even if it's on a trusted drive...
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Robert.