Me too I never had a USB problem with my 4 port Belkin either . I had the printer , camera and scanner plug to it .

Well except one time when my joker of a daughter plugged the Belkin into itself via the 4th open port took me a bit of time to figure that one out

If you're talking about the clear Belkins that one in particular has been a head scratcher more than once, but I can also tell you most times it worked fine. One worked on my machine, but took it to an older iMac and it couldn't boot if the hub was plugged in, but it didn't do it on another iMac of the same kind. Replacement hub did the same, sometimes these things work, sometimes they don't is all I'm saying, but I've seen what I consider an inordinate amount of problems with hubs as compared to PCI card solutions, which are 0 in my recollection.

It was the round hockey puck one , black with a red on light , small and stackable - Plugged into the 1st gen Mini and later the 2nd gen Mini <-- no problems

Certainly - nothing beats a PCI Card solution but to a Mini would mean an extreme make over to get a card inside

Conversely I had a problem with Apple Keyboard USB ports with the printer , that one was plug direct to the Mini - which had only 2 USB ports 1 keyboard and 1 free = ya need to have a hub if you have a scanner , camera and other slick

Yep... you sure do.

Hmmm... this feels like a ping-pong game to me... iMac, tower, iMac, tower... LOL

I forgot to ask if this machine will be for your business or home studio? If for the business studio, is there a budget? While there's only one Mac Pro there now, Apple's refurbs might be a way to go.

Business primarily. Comes with me to work when we begin the shooting season, comes back home with me once the season is wrapped. I charge them weekly for rent of the equipment as part of the contract. As for budget, I dunno. That's a tough one to answer. Depends partially on how busy the season looks to be - how many episodes we're shooting, whether or not we're doing two series rather than just one... if it's a lot of episodes and we're doing two series, then I can spring for more. Problem is we also want to replace Mila's aged single G5 tower with a 24" iMac. Amounts to a lot of money in uncertain times, you know?

Haven't thought of the refurb route but that's a useful option, thanks. I won't be doing anything until work details have been hammered out and I can see a preliminary work schedule.

Max, regarding the Adobe "coding" to take advantage of the MacPro processors:

In there current state (Creative Suite 4), they aren't taking full advantage. We're just hosed. BUT, they ARE working on it for the next version. That's about all I can say on the topic. Part of it is OSX itself, and part Adobe just trying to keep a balance between adding new features and keeping the speed acceptable.

You are in a field that I admittedly don't fully have a grasp of (technically speaking). Video work uses every bit of juice you can throw at it, I know that much. I can't say for certain that you wouldn't regret not having a MacPro vs. an iMac - you would know better than I would... However, these iMacs are no slouch, and with the RAM limit bumped up even more, the gap between the need for an iMac vs. a Pro is getting wider - I mean you really gotta KNOW you're going to need every last ounce of power from the Pro to justify the cost increase, and the lack of the 24" screen and iSight.

For me, I'm heavily betting that the next Mac I buy (whenever that is) will be an iMac. For print & web design, you simply do not need anything more. That wasn't the case just a few years ago, but it certainly is now.

Thanks for the feedback, Gizmo... but I don't do video - maybe, in my personal time, a bit of amateur-stuff from time to time with Quicktime slide shows, but for my purposes as a television art department grunt, it's strictly 2D stuff - Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, iPhoto (maybe, in the near future, Lightroom)... none of that stuff, to my knowledge, will take full advantage of the crazy horsepower the towers offer... yet.

This is turning out to be a very difficult issue for me, personally... I want lots of USB ports, but I don't need all the extra hard drive bays. I want the speed but the apps I use aren't geared to really take advantage of the speed gains a tower offers. I want the best bang for the buck but at this juncture it's a bit of an open question! Talk about your rocks and hard spots.

Maybe its just new for the mean time but by the time it will used it can make easily damage.that's why better to buy a little bit much expensive so that it would take longer to be used.
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Look for the groomsman gifts.

I use both a PC [MS Windows 98] and Macintosh.

Which do you use?

If both, which computer is your favorite?