Happy New Year everybody! I woke up today in an optimistic mood ready to take on the world.
Yesterday, as I was looking to see if I should make any last minute business purchases for the 2004 tax year, I took one more look at buying a new computer. And did it!
I'm the proud owner of a stock 2 ghz dual PowerMac G5. It's pretty cool. I started it up and it asked if I wanted to transfer data from another computer and I said yes, plugged a Firewire cable into the front of the PowerMac (that's a nice change) and into the back of my PowerMac 867 dual. Followed the simple instructions and waited about an hour and everything was transferred and working on my new machine. That alone was worth at least $100 to me.
Here's how I decided on the 2 ghz model. I considered all four models: (1) 1.8 ghz single, (2) 1.8 ghz dual, (3) 2 ghz dual and (4) 2.5 ghz dual. I would have rather bought the 2.5, but the $3000 it would cost was just a little too high for me to tolerate.
I considered the 1.8 single because I would have saved a $1000 but I felt that if I bought too far down from the top, I would still be thinking I wanted a faster machine. And it seemed sort of silly to have such a big powerful box with the lowest configuration in it.
I looked very seriously, though, at the 1.8 ghz dual. While I was at the Apple store, I surfed the Net to do some last minute research - very handy. MacWorld recommended the 2.5 ghz and gave it 4.5 stars and said if you couldn't afford it or didn't need quite the topline model to consider the 1.8 dual at $2000.
But, since it was the last day of the year and I wanted to purchase to be a 2004 purchase, I couldn't really buy online to configure the 1.8 with some extras I wanted. And, I appreciate the support value of buying from my local Apple store. I could have saved a couple hundred online perhaps but wanted the tax savings and local support. And maybe instant gratification played a small role...
Here's what I wanted that wasn't included in the 1.8. I wanted the 160 mb hard drive instead of the basic 80 mb. I wanted the extra mhz. Not long ago, the 2 mhz dual was the top model and I fancied matching that even though now there's a 2.5. I figured the dollar value of the mhz like this = 2 ghz/1.8 ghz * $2000 = $2222. Then I added $100 - the price Apple was charging to build-to-order and add the 160 mb drive. That got me to $2322.
I liked having 8 memory slots so I can add memory in 512 mhz pairs because they are cheaper. I can save $50 or more each time I buy a pair so that is worth, conservatively, $75 to me (I plan to buy 1 gb of ram in the form of a matched pair of 2-512s soon). I doubt if I will add PCI devices, so I valued the faster PCI-x slots that come with the 2 ghz model at only $25. That put me up to $2422.
The 2 comes with 512 mb RAM and the 1.8 has only 256. Apple charges $75 to get the 512. So I added $75 and got $2497. This little math exercise convinced me that the 2 ghz model was worth it and right for me - so I bought it.
I'll be spending a good part of my day today playing with my new G5. It's running very fast and perfectly. I've got a lot of computer work to do (FileMaker development) so hope that my new machine pays for itself within a month or two by (1) allowing me to work better and faster and (2) motivating me to work because its so much fun with a machine like this.