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I'm suffering regret from buying and tweaking this custom PC last year. On paper its specs are amazing but it's got so many quirks and problems I don't feel like dealing with any more. Lack of support compounds the problem.

So I want to switch to some corporate PC, with more reliable hardware.

I'm open to laptops and desktops. If the Mac Pro were slightly cheaper I'd pounce on it, but I'd like to keep it under $2000 if possible.

Are there any particularly impressive brands these days?

i'd go with an imac 27-inch 3.4GHz with bootcamp. it's really a nice machine if you don't want to upgrade it. what suprised me how well it is compared to the new mac pro in benchmarks.

i still work on my early 2008 mac pro, just upgraded to 20 gigs of ram a few years ago and a faster graphics card and it'll be fine for another year or two

yolk wrote:i'd go with an imac 27-inch 3.4GHz with bootcamp.

At first I scoffed at this but checking out the specs, it's actually not a horrible idea. Top of the line iMac gets an i7, and is significantly cheaper than a Mac Pro. Considering there aren't even many apps that can use dual graphics cards, it may be more practical.

Thanks yolk

i'm not sure if it is really a good idea to use a Haswell quad core CPU cooled by a notebook cooling solution for longer render jobs...

numerobis wrote:i'm not sure if it is really a good idea to use a Haswell quad core CPU cooled by a notebook cooling solution for longer render jobs...

it certainly is not in case a spinning HD is used.
they have a general overheat problem, my workmate just had a disk crash, and he found out it happened a lot in the earlier Imac builds. they somewhat improved the heat transfer in the newer models, but with intense rendering I would not trust in it.

also mind that you get a glossy display.

I think I'm going to be paralyzed by indecision on this one. Mac Pro seems the more future-proof prudent choice but it's hard to swallow the upfront cost.

hatts wrote: Mac Pro seems the more future-proof prudent choice but it's hard to swallow the upfront cost.

whaddaboutthis