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Wicked Fast
I purchased the item from Amazon b/c i'm a Prime member, quick shipping. I upgraded the standard build to have an additional TB of hd space (www.macsales.com) and added 8gb of ram. the thing is wicked fast. The sound of the machine is also very low, which is great. I have parallels running my windows vm's (xp and vista) and am now testing out fusion. I added a 2nd video card (same as the one it came with) and now have 3 monitors (fusion beta 2.0 support multi monitor) but i'm not super happy with the speed of the machine which i exported (using the fusion VM Ware export tool). I think it could also be a beta thing. All in all, i used to be a Dell guy and now for the money i'm definately happy with the Mac Pro b/c for about 1k less i have an 8 core power house. I expect this will by my workhorse computer for some time.

Chris Boyd
www.windwardnetworks.com

Great machine
This is a well-built, fast, quiet machine. I know of nothing better in a desktop computer, if the price is not an issue. It runs applications quickly. Adding or changing hard drives is a moment's work. The fit and finish of the computer is unparalleled.

The machine has 8 cores but today's software does not really make use of all this power. Perhaps tomorrow's will.

I recommend this computer without hesitation.

fast, but
It is fast for general works, not so much when running APPL's motion. For that, you need a lot of RAM, a lot!

A switcher, thanks to the Mac Pro and OS X
I'm writing this review from the perspective of a power Windows user, switching to OS X after 20 years of Windows. If you have been using Windows, I'm hoping this review will help you with your transition to the Mac.

PROS:
-To start off, as everyone else in their reviews has stated, the Mac Pro is whisper quiet. I can barely hear the system, even when running many applications. You do hear the hard drive, especially after adding a second drive, but the sound is minimal. I thought most of the other reviewers were exaggerating about the quietness, but they were not at all.

-Setting up the Mac Pro was very easy. I did not have to change any network settings to connect to the internet, my PCs, my NAS drive, or my printer. Since my printer was networked, all it took was a username/password to connect. My printer's picture even shows up when printing and viewing the details. Everything connected seamlessly out of the box. I just had to do a quick configuration for my multi-monitors, which took about 30 seconds. I should point out that setting up multi monitors on Vista took about 4 minutes, even though I have been using Windows all of my life.

-Simply, the Mac Pro is very fast. Before ever using the Mac Pro, I did think the system would feel slightly faster than it is, but checking the "Activity Monitor," the processors are barely used, so it could be the lack of dual quad support for most of the programs I'm using. When programs start to take advantage of dual quads and quad cores in general, I do think the system will feel even faster.

-Installing programs is a breeze. Every single program that needs to be installed, installs the exact same way. The same # of steps, the same process, and the same results. Most programs don't include an uninstaller (of course, Office Mac does). Just drag and drop the single file from the Applications folder to the trash, and it's deleted.

-I installed Vista using Boot Camp, for programs not yet available for the Mac. I then installed Parallels to run a virtual machine of the Boot Camp partition. Installation was a breeze and Parallels is a great program, as long as you're using build 5604+, since a flickering issue was present with .3 and parallels prior to that version. Using Parallels to run Vista and OS X simultaneously since there is a seamless integration of both operating systems when moving from one to the other. For example, the mouse moves from one OS to the other without any button presses. You can also open Vista programs on OS X programs and vice versa. There is also a Coherence mode, where you can have both Vista and OS X running seamlessly together in one window. I'm using dual monitors, but you can use Spaces for a virtual multi monitor setup and still have the seamless integration between OS X and Vista. One recommendation for using Vista on Parallels is to upgrade to 4 gigs of RAM. 2 gigs for Vista and 2 for OS X. I would not recommend running Vista with just 1 gig. If you use Windows XP, 1 gig should be fine, but Vista uses a lot of RAM. I do feel like I made a mistake going with Vista instead of XP.

-You can still watch your WMV files on OS X. Download Flip4Mac straight from microsoft.com and those files will open with Quicktime.

-Adium is a great and free instant messaging client that will work with almost any service out there. The integration of a program called Growl takes instant messaging to a new level. You can change the icon in the Dock, where I have Yoda Duck as my icon.

-As stated above, I did upgrade to 4 gigs of RAM. The installation of the RAM was extremely easy. Opening the system and taking a look inside, the design of the Mac Pro is a work of art. You cannot see a cable, and the air flow of the system is unbeatable. (will Apple have a water-cooled Mac Pro?) I paid $125 for Kingston RAM (instead of $500 from Apple). The installation was very easy, though it did require one more step than standard RAM installations. The RAM was displayed in the OS X system info right after booting. I highly recommend 4 gigs of RAM if you are using a VM, especially if that VM is Vista.

-I also added a second hard drive to the system to use as my Time Machine backup. Again, installation was a breeze. Hit a button and pull out the tray. Use the built in screws and push the tray back in. That's it. Once I booted, OS X stated a drive was not formatted and that I needed to format the drive. A quick click and 5 minutes later, I had an extra 320 gigs of space.

-Time Machine is simply the easiest backup solution. Click a button to turn it on, choose a hard drive, and that's it. If you want to sell someone on the the Mac Pro or any Mac, show the recovery of a file using Time Machine.

-Working with the Finder is quick and easy. Find the files you want and click the spacebar to get a preview. Additionally, you can quickly and easily find a program, files, etc., using Spotlight. Spotlight indexes your entire computer without reading and writing to the hard drive as much as Vista. If you use Vista, you'll hear the hard drive indexing every so often, whereas on OS X, you will not hear a blip.

-No need for defragmenting. There isn't a native defragmenter in OS X. Apple recommends that if you feel you need to defrag, a system restart will do it. Though there are defrag utilities in the Apple support docs, it states that defragging could even decrease performance!

-The system just does not crash. The Force Quit application, much like CTR-ALT-DEL, is something I have not used in the over a month of using my Mac Pro. On the other hand, Vista has crashed on me since installing it, but this could be due to it being setup as a VM, so I cannot completely fault Vista.

-If you want a program, chances are it exists in OS X. There are certain specialized programs that will not work, but with time, these should be added as well, as the OS X market share grows. Programs like Yummy FTP and Coda, to edit HTML, are all out there. Interestingly, I found that many products have multiple competitors, where you'd think OS X wouldn't have that many programs written for it.

-I do like the keyboard that the system comes with. It types very well and is very quiet. The mighty mouse is not useable for me, because I'm left-handed. I do not invert my keys, so I still use the right part of the mouse as my right-click. Try clicking on the right side and 90% of the time, nothing will happen. Now try with your right hand, it will always work.

-Great support by Mac. I called once, and the support was quick and easy. It's obvious that the initial person answering the call has limited knowledge, but she asked many times that I could be transferred to another, more experienced technician. (I called to confirm if Time Machine was not available with my NAS drive.) The phone support should be longer, but you can purchase more time if you feel the need.

-The Mac Pro, though pretty large, looks fantastic and also has nice handles on the top, so you can lift the system pretty easily. Even the power plug is designed to fit seamlessly in the port.

CONS
-First and foremost, do not expect to play games like Cyris on this system. Though the RAM and processor speeds well exceed the recommended specs, the video card of the Mac Pro is not up to it. The ATi VC is pretty weak in this respect. If you expect to game, I'll suggest the Nvidia 8800GT which can now be bought outside of Apple. Also, the VC options in general are limited. You must use a VC flashed with the Mac Bios.

-The #1 reason I am running Vista is because of Outlook. There is no good way (one program, called Little Machines, was able to transfer the files, but without any attachments, though it did work pretty well) of bringing my PST file from Outlook to either Mail or even Microsoft's own program, Entourage. I have 2 gigs worth of email and losing everything to move to Entourage was too much. I hope there will be a native way of transferring those files over, with their attachments, seamlessly. Much like Boot Camp, I hope Apple comes up with a solution, even if Microsoft does not. Without Boot Camp, I would have never purchased the Mac Pro.

-The same transfer issue applies to Quicken. There is no native way of bringing the QDF file to Mac. There are instructions of how to convert the file, but you will have to make large concessions. For example, all category names must be 15 characters or less. Additionally, not everything is moved over. You lose too much information for a program in which every bit of information is important.

-Though hard drives are cheap, there isn't an option to use Time Machine with my previously purchased NAS drive, even if I were to format in the native OS X file system. Time Capsule, Apple's own NAS, is supported. I was hoping this would be added in 10.5.3, but it was not. I'd like to have an external backup as well, just in case of a power spike causing both hard drives to fail internally.

-A shortage of USB ports on the back. The system comes with 3 USB ports on the back. Pretty low by today's standards. I never use Firewire, even though there are two of them. There are similar ports on the front though.

-A system as expensive as this should not only have a fast hard drive, it should have a fast top-of-the-line hard drive. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Mac Pro uses a 7200 RPM hard drive with 8mb of cache. I'd expect at least 16mb of cache and possibly even a 10,000 RPM drive. How can a $2,700 system not have a faster hard drive?

-Though Safari is a nice browser overall (the web clip feature, for example) I'd like to see a more complete browser, with constant updates, like Firefox. Though Firefox does have a memory issue, those should be solved in version 3. Overall Firefox is a better browser. I feel Safari has some catching up to do. I hope to see an updated version shortly, even if Safari is at version 3 itself, the updates seem slow and Apple is pretty quiet regarding its Safari plans.

-An extremely small issue, but using Command to copy and paste is frustrating being left-handed, since the keys are so close to each other. I wish there was a way to alter the keyboard shortcuts.

I highly recommend the book Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual. This book contains a lot of information not found elsewhere while containing shortcuts and info in one convenient book.

The bottom line is that I've switched and I'm looking forward to the time when I can delete my Windows partition and move to OS X full time. Once the email and Quicken issues are hopefully solved, I will be using the Mac Pro and OS X full time. (Unfortunately, a PC will be a must as a second computer for some time.) You'll learn the equivalents of Task Manager, keyboard shortcuts, etc., specific to OS X in no time and be a switcher from Windows to Mac. Every user will have their own experiences. I have mentioned many cons, but none of them are a deal breaker. On the other hand, the pros make the switch a must.

Unbelievable!
This machine is ridiculously powerful. My wife works as and Art Director and she uses her Mac every day with Adobe CS3.

She had a dual G5 that was limited in the amount of memory it could support (4Gb max) and to make a long story short, she needed to replace it with a Mac that could open huge files in Photoshop.

This Mac is unbelievable. First of all the design inside the box is brilliant. The way it is designed, it allows the air to go through the entire case (since it has fans in the front and in the back). Adding memory or hard drives has been simplified to the maximum and it is now error proof.

This Mac uses 800MHz RAM and it can support 8 sticks Max. Each stick can be up to 4Gb each for a maximum RAM of 32Gb. Due to the bus they put in this machine, if you can put 8 sticks in it, it is even better as it can now access them in parallel for a bus width of 256 bits.

Don't buy the RAM with Apple as they are obviously gouging. I bought the RAM at Other World Computing and their pricing is much more reasonable.

On top of it, I bought VMWare Fusion to run Windows on this Mac and it simply flies. With its 8 cores, you have more power than most applications will ever need. However, if you need to crunch data for a living, this machine saves a lot of time. Just an example: on her former Mac (the dual G5 with 4GB of RAM) Photoshop 7 took 30 minutes to open a 1.6Gb file and the scrolling through the hi-res image was sluggish. On this machine (8-core with 16Gb of RAM), Photoshop CS3 takes about 1.5 minutes to open the same file and the scrolling is smooth.

I had a look at a comparable Dell PC before buying this one, but as of today, there is still no configuration that directly compares to this Mac. The Precision T5400 or T7400 are probably the closest machines. However, as soon as you add 2 quad core CPU's to the configuration of the Dell, the price explodes and the Mac is much cheaper.

There are other configurations of this Mac (8-core @3.0 GHz and 8-core @3.2 GHz.) I think these other configurations cannot justify the extra cost. So far, with the 8-core @2.8 GHz, I have never been able to max out the CPU's and this looks like there is a bottleneck in the system that is limiting the amount of data the CPU's can crunch. Considering the amount of RAM I have in this box (16Gb) I don't think it was swapping. My hunch is that the bus, even though it is faster than the previous generations, is still limiting what the processors can do. I think this version is the best deal as the faster CPU's in the other versions will be marginally faster than this one.

Bottom line: This is an amazing machine for the price. Most users won't need this kind of power but if you make a living with your machine, having a monster like this is definitely worth it, especially if you add a ton of RAM.