NAB request from Down Under

Since it's such a long walk for me to the NAB, I was wondering if you guys could do me a favour. Anyone who is at NAB who can get their hands on an Octocore (8 core) machine, could you please give it a hammering for me, and let me know what you think of it?

Long reviews are not mandatory, although they would of course be welcome. Just - 'Wow that thing is FANTASTIC. I think I actually went BLIND playing with it.' or ..'Eh, could be better. Not that much different to my quad core', would be great.

Here's a starter review from Barefeats. Rob(Art)Morgan is known for first up testing of any new Apple usable thinge'.

His initial testing has some good points.

[www.barefeats.com]

Thanks John - this is good news :

"As for the reference to compatible drive kits, Apple's bulletin makes absolutely no sense. And, NO, the sled design has not been altered on the 8 core, as some have claimed.
Don't let this bulletin scare you into paying "luxury" prices for Apple memory and hard drive upgrade kits. "

I was wondering if the bulletin on the Kbase about requiring special memory and HD kits was the real deal or not. This confirms it.

I guess now the gamble is that Leopard will address the threading bottleneck, and free up the 8 core to really move. Seems it's a lot faster for a lot of stuff I do anyway. That photoshop thing always intrigues me, since I've been using PS for a million years and I've never really noticed it being 'slow' - at least not in the last 10 years or so. I don't work with RAW files though, so that's probably a big factor.

Judester:

I'm on the MacBook Pro and always find that loading the CS suite stuff - usually InDesign, PS and Illustrator - the CPU clogs up and feeds me back the occasional crash. Navigating through the various functions is also a little cumbersome.

I can hardly wait for CS3 to arrive and scream through my machine. And exporting InDesign files into Dreamweaver code will be very cool.

Jamie

I ordered one. As I was reading the bare feats review I realised I was discounting all the bad things they said, so there's really no point in fighting it any longer.

I'll let you know if I find anything too slow.

Hahahaha! Well done Jude! Its been a long time coming....

Did you put FCS2 in the cart as well?

How much all up in the end?

I will put FCS 2 in - and have the grunt to run it, too, when the machine arrives, which is SO cool.

So far I'm up to about AU$7,500, but that's without any additional drives or the FCS 2 upgrade. I got the Radeon graphics card and made everything wireless to make the desk a bit less cluttered.

Probably going to throw in some new SATAs later, too.

Apple shop won't tell me how long on delivery though. Mine's the first one off the rank.

Ouch. Though SATAs won't kill you later.

As always, it'll be interesting to see how they flow to Australia. It seems every second Apple product takes an extra 3 months to get here...

Do you think we might have a price adjustment soon due to the US dollar/AU dollar? I haven't seen it at 84c for 20 years...

No matter - I'm excited for you! the grunt will be excellent.

how much RAM?

There won't be any price adjustment for me, I already signed on the dotted line. You never see any shift in these prices, anyway, so I guess the profit/loss of the US vs AU dollar must get absorbed somewhere along the line before the retail end.

I got 2 gig of RAM factory installed. It's actually a bit annoying the way they have the RAM options set up - you can have 2 x 512, 4 x 512 or 4 x 1 gig (and up from there) Since it's nearly another $700 to go to 4 x 1G, I decided to wait and add aftermarket RAM when I get the rig. I would have much preferred to get 2 x 1 gig sticks though, had it been an option.

Do you shop at Streetwise.com.au, by any chance? Their SATA prices seem really good. And weirdly, when I do a workup of the same system I am buying, they can do it about $300 cheaper than the mac shop .. what the?

That's crappy about the RAM situation. My fiance is about to buy a MBP, and I was stoked to discover they will do 1 gig in 1 chip now - aftermarket the other gig an you are away.

I'm off to Streetwise this arvo for a client. They're really good actually - no issues with returns etc - and are very competitively priced, even compared to grey market PC shops.

Haven't done online though - they are only 15 or so minutes away in the car....I'm sure it would be fine.

They tend to do machines for $50-$100 under apple retail most of the time for standard specs. It doesn't surprise me that they are $300 less on a specced machine like yours.

The other one to keep an eye on is Computers Now, who just moved - they were doing $300 discounts on MBs and MBPs last week, but I missed last weeks Green Guide. Bummer.

I'll be in Perth in June for a week or two - would be nice to put a face to a name if you're around!

J.

Yeah it'd be great ot meet you Jus - I'm away from the 5th to the 11th of June though - having a holiday down in lovely, backwards, out of the way Pemberton. When are you coming?