MacPro Purchase

ratsam

Hi

About to update my PowerMac G5 and am going to buy a MacPro dual quad. I've been buying Macs for years and have yet to find somewhere that can give me decent discounts or incentives for buying if ye know what I mean.
I know the markup on a Mac is little or nothing but was just curious if any of yee have come across a dealer that gives that little extra when spending over 3K...!!! :eek: I know I'm chancing my arm but what the hell its worth a try...!

Rats

Jev/N

Either a second hand or a refurb?

The second hand ones tend to have been taken care of very well, due to the amount the original owner would have paid for them - but this is just a generalisation.

whippet

ratsam wrote: »

Hi

About to update my PowerMac G5 and am going to buy a MacPro dual quad. I've been buying Macs for years and have yet to find somewhere that can give me decent discounts or incentives for buying if ye know what I mean.
I know the markup on a Mac is little or nothing but was just curious if any of yee have come across a dealer that gives that little extra when spending over 3K...!!! :eek: I know I'm chancing my arm but what the hell its worth a try...!

Rats

to be fair with retail margins of about 3-4% on apple hardware you can't really expect any sort of cash discount for just the machine. But if you are buying it with some software or other bits and pieces you might be able to negotiate something

ratsam

Jev/N wrote: »

Either a second hand or a refurb?

The second hand ones tend to have been taken care of very well, due to the amount the original owner would have paid for them - but this is just a generalisation.

Yeah I have been keeping my eyes peeled for secondhand decent spec machines but nothing much is showing up. No refurbs either... well apart from a crazy expensive one in the Apple refurbs section...!

ratsam

whippet wrote: »

to be fair with retail margins of about 3-4% on apple hardware you can't really expect any sort of cash discount for just the machine. But if you are buying it with some software or other bits and pieces you might be able to negotiate something

I'll probably get an extra harddrive and more RAM but I doubt most dealers will be able to match online dealers. I really pity Apple dealers... over the last 15 years I have many good relationships (I buy for a few architects offices) with decent Apple dealers and seen them go to ground... most of them had loads of Mac sales but very little of anything else... no one can survive on margins that small unless they are shipping massive amounts of gear... Apart from the one to one customer service there is very little advantage to buying locally over buying from Apple direct..!

Cheers

Rats

philiporeilly

I am using a Mac Pro at work but would seriously consider moving down to 27" iMac for next desktop purchase. They are really powerful, and cheaper. You should list how you will be using it for, especially when moving from G5.

Save your money (and desk space) unless you intend on some very serious video editing or other intensive professional tasks.

ratsam

philiporeilly wrote: »

I am using a Mac Pro at work but would seriously consider moving down to 27" iMac for next desktop purchase. They are really powerful, and cheaper. You should list how you will be using it for, especially when moving from G5.

Save your money (and desk space) unless you intend on some very serious video editing or other intensive professional tasks.

Yeah I have seriously considered it. I have used a Core i5 version and it was very quick. I have a couple of reasons why I was going with the MacPro... The first being that I recently purchased a top end Dell Ultrasharp monitor and dont really want to let it go. The second is that I need to be able to have quick access to multiple harddrives which again the MacPro gives me. I know I could go down the line of using eSata drives or a Drobo setup but by the time I'd do all that I'd be looking at a simliar price to the MacPro. The reason I want such a powerful machine is that I am a professional architectural photographer. The RAW files from my camera can sometimes be up on 100mb's each when converted to Tif's and often I need to have 6-7 of these open at once...! At the moment this is killing my G5 (would probably be difficult on any machine......!)....!

As it happens I may have sourced a new MacPro for a little bit cheaper than normal... Just hope it works out...!

Thanks for the info

Rats