• Day -1200: Buy Powerbook G4.
  • Day -900: Buy 20″ Apple Display (aluminum).
  • Day -600 to Day -90: Decide on an iMac for next machine. Write a number of times bitching about said iMac and how it doesn’t match the Cinema Display.
  • Day -90: Finally decide to commit to a Mac Pro, thanks in part to fledgling freelance aspirations.
  • Day -30: Mac Pros updated a week before Macworld San Francisco.
  • Day -9: Order 2 500 GB hard drives in preparation for new machine.
  • Day -7: New hard drives show up. Break down and order quad-core Mac Pro and new 20″ Apple Display.
  • Day -6: Display ships.
  • Day -4: Display arrives. Computer ships. Order 2 GB of RAM.
  • Day -3: Computer arrives in Wisconsin.
  • Day -2: is a Sunday. Nothing happens on Sundays; that’s not even a real day.
  • Day -1: Computer arrives in Mosinee and sits 20 minutes away from me the entire day. RAM is delivered.
  • Day 0: Computer is delivered. Angels sing out (Louise) from the heavens. New hard drives and RAM installed. Initial setup begins. Migration of files from laptop and external hard drive. Delete initial admin account in favor of the admin account imported from old machine. Worry about how long it takes and how it doesn’t seem faster than the old machine. Lament that the displays are not the same color.
  • Day 1: Realization that deleting the admin account pretty much screwed the permissions of every file on the new computer. Grapple with options for getting around this. Worry about noise from machine, but then realize it’s actually just the external hard drive.
  • Day 2: Post pictures of new setup on Flickr. Immediately afterwords, wipe everything and start from scratch. Fresh install from provided discs. Import admin account directly as the main account (instead of doing it later). All is good. Install Windows via Boot Camp.
  • Day 3: Finish up with the initial re-setup, and start actually using the Mac Pro for work. Realize that yes, it is indeed faster (duh). Install Parallels. Uninstall Parallels and install Fusion.
Impressions

I like it, obviously. It’s fast and more than capable of handling everything I give it. I no longer dread working on print-resolution Photoshop files, and I can actually browse Flickr without locking up the browser.

The new keyboard takes a little getting used to but it’s very nice. The decision to move the hotkeys around is kind of strange, especially since the keys used by the volume controls are also the keys used by Expose and Dashboard by default, a problem easily fixed by reassigning the Expose keys. Still though, it’s a strange decision because they overlap and impede functionality in a way not everyone would know how to overcome. With the recent Macbook revisions, all of the keyboards now follow this standard, so maybe we’ll see this addressed in a software update.

Beyond that, there’s not much to say. It’s like my old computer but better in every way, and I can run Windows on it. I’m not sure there’s a downside here once you get past the price.