buying a new mac

[kds]

I've been wrestling with my PC and my 002R and I'm thinking maybe I should just buy a Mac and be done with it. Can I just order a machine from Apple or are there a bunch of hardware caveats like with a Windows machine? Will I need to buy any additional hardware? I was looking at a 2Ghz dual processor G5 with 2G of RAM. Is a stock HD from them going to be OK for the operating system? What about the audio drive? Thanks for your help!

[Vaphoron]

The G5 will work wonderfully right out of the box. Just add a second HD for audio like a WD Raptor drive and then you are all set.

[ggunn]

...and max it out with RAM.

[kds]

Is 2G of RAM plenty? The price of the Mac really starts escalating beyond 2G. Would more RAM be better than the second processor? Thanks for the input!

[41217]

You dont need to max out the ram/not for Protools anyways!2 gig is more than enough!The second drive is the one thing you must have though, & seeing as the G5 supports SATA drives, your laughin!

[KevO]

If you decide to go Mac, check out Smalldog.com. They sell refurbished and new machines and have very excellent service. They even sell some pro audio software and hardware. If you want to buy a new Mac from them, you just have to buy something -- anything, even just a little widget -- from them to qualify to buy their new machines (this is a caveat of their deal with Apple.)

I've bought two refurbished machines from them and not had a lick of trouble -- plus their customer service department actually understands customer service. Good luck...

[kds]

Excellent! Thanks everyone!!

[CaseyM]

I just bought my G5. What can I expect as far as converting my WinXP tracks on the current firewire drive? Im hearing mixed messages re: reconfiguring the drive and the old data working out of the box.
Any help is much appreciated?

[Hotso]

Which Sata drive do you recommend and what size are you using? I presume no
PCI card is needed to make this work?

Thanks
Hotso

You dont need to max out the ram/not for Protools anyways!2 gig is more than enough!The second drive is the one thing you must have though, & seeing as the G5 supports SATA drives, your laughin!

[max cooper]

I got two 200G SATA drives on Ebay (new ones) from one of those guys with an outlet store. They were under $100 each and say Maxtor on them. That'd mean they're Maxtors, huh?

I know I've mentioned this before, but OSX will configure the two internal drives in a raid scheme. I run my system and PTLE on an external FW drive and I record to the two SATA drives. Neither Digi nor Apple say you can do this, BTW. I do.

Yer gonna laugh when you get to install the drive inside the computer. It could conceivably take you more than 60 seconds, but not much more.

No PCI card needed.