The only time I hear the fans come on is during start-up. Otherwise I never hear them. They are much quieter than the G5. My friend works at a recording studio and they had a G4 and G5 and they were like jet engines compared with the new MacPros. I had an iMac 2.0GHz Core Duo and I have to say the new MacPro is just as quiet. As for graphics cards I have the ATI Radeon HD 4870 and I only hear it during start-up. I supposes if you ran it full tilt in a hot room you might hear the fans more, but for normal use you don’t hear anything.

I also use my MacPro as a media server right next to my television, so I know what you mean about needing quiet. No problems at all, it’s silent.

I also think I am leaning to the MacPro, since I already have a 23″ display; my biggest question is NOISE! I now have a dual 2.5Ghz Power Mac G5, and the fan noise is always going up and down in volume, as the fans speed up and slow down. The biggest reason to get an iMac, for me, would be to have a nearly silent computer. Do your fans come on a lot, and are they noisy? I’ve heard different graphics cards can also make different sound levels.

http://jasonbryant.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/mac-pro-is-as-fast-as-i-am/

There’s been no issues at all, except for a few kernel panics and beach balls of death. But what Mac doesn’t get that once in awhile.

I’m running ProTools on it for audio editing and it’s very stable and snappy. I haven’t used anything other than iPhoto for my photography, but plan to get into Aperture or Adobe Lightroom in the future.

It’s very quiet and I love being able to swap new hard drives in and out. That was my biggest problem with the old iMac, the drive is virtually inaccessible and I was limited to 250GB (the biggest drive at the time). With drive capacities increasing and prices dropping this is one of the biggest reasons to get a MacPro.

I got the Quad-Core Intel Xeon, but with hyper-threading it actually shows up as 8 cores. This is great for multi-tasking, you can still watch YouTube while you render out some video. With the iMac you have to pretty much walk away and wait for some processor intensive activity to finish.

I like my 24 inch Samsung, it’s the SyncMaster 2443. Picked it up for $299. Now I’m not a graphics professional so I don’t know how accurate the colors are, but for my needs it’s great. And I could get three for the price of one Apple monitor. Samsung, for the price, offer great value. I’m sure your HP monitor is good too. I like the landscape to portrait idea, my Samsung can’t do that. I looked into Dell, but the Samsung was still cheaper by about $60 (here in Canada at least) and had better high and tilt adjustment. To get the better stand with the Dell monitors you have to get into the $600 monitors.

At the end of the day, a new iMac would probably meet my needs 85% of the time, but swapping hard drives, faster Quad-Core chips, more affordable RAM (because you have more slots and don’t have to use 4GB sticks like the iMac), more firewire and USB ports and the ability to swap out or add monitors as they get better and cheaper make the MacPro a better (albeit more expensive) choice for the power user or graphics professional.

I considered a loaded Imac and had the opportunity to work on a new one at Santa Ana College Digital Media Center while taking an Adobe Illustrator CS4 class. They certainly are nice machines however they definately lack the expandability.

Also how do you like the Monitor? I agree Apple’s dsplay prices are pretty insane. I have bee using an HP w2408h which is a 24″ wide screen. It has a nice base with a joint that actually allows you to rotate the screen from landscape to portrait.

I wanted Gigabit Ethernet and Blu-ray because I use both everyday. Don’t be sorry about me buying expensive stuff, I find the PS3 to be a great value because it’s an excellent Blu-ray player and a great gaming console.

Answer this if you arent dowloading big files, such as HD videos off XBL marketplace, why would you need a Gigabit cord?

The blu-ray is for people with DVD’s not people who plan to download. And i am sorry you wasted money on that expensive stuff. Also now Xbox 360 has very succesfully attained Netflix. 5 mins to choose and start watching a video.

98% of black people are voting for obama just because he is black. White people are split between obama, nadar, and McCain. Think about it.

The truth is this is a race campaign. The Democrats control the senate and congress and have the lowest approval rating in US history. The Democrats couldn’t even beat Bush in the elections thus why they are going after the black vote in the US, about 45 million blacks. Thus, why obama voted present over 130 times, avoided the tough issues, and never challenged his party leaders on senate to preserve his political career. Only 143 days on state senate when he decided to run for office.

The Democrats lost because the US is not a socialist/communist system. Americans fought against Nazi Germany, their socialist party, and communist USSR for decades, just to name a few.

Again, Clinton supported deregulation and introduced FTAs like NAFTA. That is why the US economy was strong during his administration. McCain also supports deregulation and fights for FTAs like NAFTA. These initiatives will help our economy. Our economy is very important, McCain is better for our economy. I hope people get educated before they vote.

US businesses create US jobs. obama wants to limit the growth of US businesses, which is limiting the growth of US jobs. If you increase tax on US businesses they will either just relocate to a lower tax country taking American jobs with them, pass the added tax cost to consumers or go bankrupt. GM and Ford can barely compete globally and obama wants to tax them more. The smaller businesses that are reliant on GM and Ford will also be greatly affected, destroying more US jobs.

The US is the land of opportunity not the land of equal outcome. Why should government take your money and give it to people who are already on welfare to spread the wealth?

What Caused Our Economic Crisis? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4

Obama is no Bill Clinton. Clinton is a de-regualtor just like John McCain. Clinton was the one who introduced NAFTA, which McCain supports.

Obama is more of a extreme leftist. $1 trillion in new spending, more government programs and interventions, sending welfare checks to 45% of the 95% of the people in his tax plan because 45% of those people don’t even get taxed.

Politicians like Obama are such pimps. They promise to spend a trillion dollars on you, but they don’t tell you that they are using YOUR MONEY!

Obama’s Black Liberation Theology is based on Marxism for black people, the foundations of Communism. Even Bill Ayers was an extreme leftist.

Our economy is very important, McCain is better for our economy. I hope people get educated before they vote.

If Canadian networks can’t stand on their own without purchasing US programming and then HIJACKING the originating US signal so that Canadians can’t watch the original network, these networks are in a sad state of affairs and shouldn’t even exist. Heck, CBC is all we really need anyway.

http://typedef.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/why-i-want-a-ps3/