Never owned a Mac, thinking of buying a Mac Pro, could use some advice...

Most people use SuperDuper and/or Carbon Copy Cloner to make OS X images.
http://www.bombich.com
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

You can have OS X anywhere you want on as many drives as needed, it isn't locked to internal or to any one drive or bay.

True Image 11 doesn't support EFI partitions and you might want to check with them further - I emailed them back and forth for a month. Norton Ghost 14 or DataBackupPC 1.0 might.

You can have multiple systems on one drive or multiple drives, and Vista Ultimate 64 works fine.

Seems like only XP really needs BootCamp, everything else you can use native formatting tools, or Apple Disk Utility (to create NTFS you would need MacFUSE 3G to be able to partition as NTFS or to write to NTFS from OS X).

Apple Disk Utility: sparsebundle disk images are perfect for imaging OS X. The documentation that comes with SuperDuper (Shiftpocket software) is worth the read.

Hi Zeus

I may be able to answer some of your questions. And sorry in advance if this sounds like yet another of those "religious conversion" stories 🙂

I'm a software developer/architect, mostly doing Microsoft .NET/C#/Web Services coding. I'd been a loyal Microsoft guy since I started on the original IBM PC back in the 80's. Like a lot of people (or so it seems) I just got fed up with Microsoft's high-handed and self-important ways. More importantly, the company always seemed to be lagging behind technically. Looking at beta versions of Vista did not bode well for the future - it just seemed awful. When Vista came out it it was the last straw - I just could not get enthusiastic about this bloated, slow, mess of an operating system. I really hated it. Still do. Even with a top-spec machine, Vista didn't run in the snappy, responsive way it I thought it should. Nothing seemed well thought out.. yuck!

Then, by chance, I was staying for a few days with somebody who had a Mac. Now, for years and years I not even considered Macs as remotely serious machines. My only experience of them was in the late 80's when somebody at work had one. He took delight in pushing a floppy disc into the machine so that it would respond "Ah, it's so big!". Great, just a toy. Not for serious programming work. So, encountering Mac OS X Tiger on my friend's iMac was something of a shock. It was so responsive, clean and elegant. When you turned it on it only took about 30 seconds or so for the thing to be ready for use, etc, etc.

Long story short, I bought an iMac, then a newer, bigger, faster iMac, then a MacBook Pro and now I have a Mac Pro. I still have to work with Windows to do my .NET-related day job. But 95% of the time I work on the Mac using various VMWare virtual machines. I can switch between Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP in a few seconds and still be working in a Mac environment. And the performance of running Windows inside VMWare is even better than on my dedicated top-spec Windows laptop! I have a selection of virtual machines to choose from and, because these virtual machines are just files, I can back them up, revert to saved copies, etc. I've tried Bootcamp but it's much less convenient and performance inside the virtual machines is never an issue (although I don't do any gaming). So, you could keep virtual machines on your NAS box or local Mac hard drive.

With regard to graphics drives, etc. I've never had any problems whatever in this respect. For example, when I installed Windows XP on VMWare it automatically recognised all my hardware (including some obscure audio interfaces, USB-based MIDI interfaces, etc.) and made it available. I must admit that when I was new to the Mac I expected to have driver issues, but never have had... So, my guess is that you'll be able to run all your Windows and Linux distros on the Mac without too many problems.

You mention Apple's hardware as being "locked-in". I don't think that's the case. Certainly the consumer Mac models like the iMac can't be upgraded (by you or me) internally, expect for memory. The Mac Pro though is very easy to upgrade - though there may be some limitations with regard graphics cards.

Re your questions about graphics card drivers. Yes, these come with OS X in just the same as as with Windows. Because I've also used the card that comes "with the box" this has not been an issue for me. However, unless you get a Mac Pro you can't swap-in your existing graphics card. And even then I think you may find restrictions. However, other, more knowledgeable Mac users on this forum may have other thoughts.

Overall though, the experience of using the Mac in terms of software is very much the reverse of Windows - the OS is very open and well documented. It really is an IT person's dream machine - so much to fiddle around with (particularly if you know anything about Unix!). Unlike Microsoft who charge a FORTUNE for their development tools, Apple give them to you for free. And very good they are too!

Finally, one bit of advice. If you are considering buying a new Mac, join the Apple Developer Connection scheme as a Select member. It'll cost you around $400 to join but they give you a hardware discount for Apple-store purchased items that will save you a ton of $$$'s - absolutely definitely worth doing.

Hope this helps (and good luck)!

Russ

I like to keep things short and to the point , so I hope you may find this useful.

I have been using windows professionally for 20 years and work as a IT project manager.

Qualified CCNA/P MCSE, etc so I have a interest too.

I was always interested in Mac's, BeOS, Windows, Ubuntu and run multiple OS's.

In one sentence "Apple Are good at selling " Yes they have fast and often have leading specifications - but can the software utilise it, NO, and who in the PC world buys the latest? wait 2 months and its cheaper and superseded, in Mac world everything costs the earth, even though its 2 years old, e.g X1900xt graphic card, so be careful.

Simply put you can do more with Windows. period.

Apple are restrictive the pro Mac is not expandable, in my eyes. Why? Simple, graphics are dreadful, old and rarely up-dateable, old Mac Pro users are stuck with 2+ year old graphic cards, Blu-Ray drives, adding new PCi components etc

Would I buy another Mac Pro - No
Would i buy a Mac - Yes and mac mini.
I could enjoy the experience just as well because I dont need applications like Aperture, Studio etc.
They are great apps but the justification to by a Mac for these apps is low.

My suggestion is not to buy a Mac Pro, but to first get a feel for the OS, time machine is fantastic, as you use the OS you will see its restrictions, games, software, updates, and drivers.

I feel safe on my Mac, I play games on my PC, I code/develop on a PC and use Ubuntu for Linux development, BeOS is a hobby.

You will never be without Windows, but you will love a Mac.

Zeus - you're welcome (I think I managed to be even more wordy than you in my reply!).

Re your questions:

1) That's a good question. I've never tried it or seen any comments about people doing it, but I would guess that you could. Stuff like the graphics cards HD, etc. are standard. Once you've used the Mac I seriously doubt that you'll hate OS X enough to want to completely get rid of it. It'll take take a few weeks to get used to though (and you'll find yourself doing Ctrl+[whatever] instead of Cmd+[whatever] ). Even if it turns out that you did have to keep a copy of OS X on the machine (so that Bootcamp would keep working and allow you to boot natively into Windows), it doesn't take up that much space and could could pretty much forget it was there.

2) Yes, I think your choice of video cards is limited. But, you certainly can upgrade them yourself.
It's just like a PC - pull out the card and stick in a new one. If you're going to buy a new Mac Pro, use the Apple Store to do a trial configuration to see what cards are available. For the current new model, Apple seems to offer a choice of three: cheap and cheerful, slightly less cheap and really, really expensive! If you're buying an older model, I suggest you post a question on these forums to see exactly what cards are supported.

3) You'll certainly be able to run Windows and Linux on your Mac. As I said before, for me Windows runs faster in a virtual machine on the Mac than it does on my newish top-spec HP laptop.

Do let us know what you decide to do.

I started on Windows 3.1 (and DOS), which was probably one of the best arrangements ever (DOS ran things, and windows, like other apps was merely a piece of programme that ran on DOS).
Anyhow, with an intel Mac Pro, you can run boot camp, enabling ONE computer to run two separate OS's (e.g. window for games, and Mac for programming/ devlopping/photoshop etc). So that idea is great. The Mac Pro, is cheaper than comparable PC's and is certainly a powerhouse, but lacks the "indestructibility" of the older power Mac.

HOWEVER, whilst converted, I think that the older Power Mac (running on IBM processors) and running Tiger (the predecessor of Leopard) was a lot smoother.
Whilst I would still recommend Apple over Windows machines, it is not what it used to be. It's a great deal more commercialised now, and the "whaow" and "exclusive" factors seem somewhat gone in favour of commercial enterprise.

That would be my comments. Good luck