For years, my home office was filled with obsolete PCs, discarded disk drives and generally looked like I was compulsively hoarding computer parts, or living in a failed computer repair business.
I would routinely purchase the cheapest PCs I could assemble. I would upgrade even more frequently, to keep up with the demands of writing and compiling more and more code.
My strategy changed five years ago when I decided my time was becoming more valuable, and productivity was a competitive advantage in a world of outsourcing. I decided I needed an “Ultimate Developer Rig.”
My strategy was to spend some serious cash to buy a serious workstation and not have to upgrade so often. I had planned that I would upgrade once every five years.
Rather than build my own, I purchased an 8-core Mac Pro for my professional software development. I leveraged VMWare fusion to run Windows XP, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Gentoo Linux.
I could write software under Linux, Mac, and Windows, and software for embedded ARM and PowerPC, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices.
At the time, the Mac Pro was the cheapest 8-core system out there when I compared it to HP and Dell.
So when Apple stopped selling Mac Pros in Europe, I knew that an upgrade was on the way, or they would simply abandon the market. Then in June, they unveiled a sneak peek of the new Mac Pro which should go on sale this month.
Ever since Apple first gave a sneak peek at the all-new Mac Pro, I’ve trying to rationalize purchasing one. Unfortunately, I’m having a tough time doing it.
But time will tell…