Marcus Asmussen writes:

First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your recent purchase of a Mac Pro, I have been using one myself for the last 12 months after years of using windows based machines have never been happier with a computer than I have been with my Mac Pro. Just wanted to share 1 or 2 tips with you and maybe a few of your subscribers that may be holding out on a Mac purchase. One of the best programs I have been using I discovered through your site is VMware Virtual Desktop, which I have been running on my Leopard installation since its release. Prior to VMware I was using Boot-camp to run a few windows apps that I still use and PC based games. One of the great things about Leopard of course is Spaces, which allows you to run multiple desktop instances at once. While I use Spaces for everyday tasks, one of the most practical and useful things I now use spaces for is VMware virtual desktop.

Spaces allows me to keep a Full-Screen instance of windows open on my desktop while simultaneously switching back and forth using keyboard shortcuts between my Leopard desktop and my windows desktop. Also with its latest release; VMware will take your existing windows partition used for Boot-Camp and utilize that for your Virtual Desktop environment, so no other VMware specific partition is required. I still use Boot-Camp for gaming, but for every other task I once would boot into windows I now save so much time just by clicking over into VMware using Spaces, and with my Mac Pro Having room for 4 internal hard drives when setting up windows through Boot-Camp I have a separate internal hard drive for windows so no partitioning is required at all with boot-Camp Hope you or some of your subscribers find this tip useful.

P.S As for extra RAM, I am now running 5 gig at the moment and find that sufficient, as it stands right now Kingston RAM prices have dropped tremendously for the Mac Pro, still expensive by comparison to other pc system RAM, but far shy of Apple pricing. Enjoy your Mac Pro.

Yeah, I’m still tossed up on the memory… gotta order that soon.

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I asked how much I should get. Andru answered:

Figured, I’d drop you a piece of advice as far as the RAM goes in the new Penryn-based Mac Pros (which I have.) I saw you were talking about having 2, 8, 16, or 32 GB in there. However, you aren’t limited in that fashion… not sure why you think those are your only options. Your RAM needs to be installed in pairs, and you get up to 4 pairs. Those 4 pairs do NOT have to match each other. I have 3 pairs of 2GB modules and 1 pair of 1GB modules in there, totaling 10GB.

I got mine with 2GB, and had ordered 8GB separately. The RAM came after the computer did, and I was in hell for 3 days while waiting for that RAM to arrive. I keep an absolute minimum of 14 apps running at a time on this machine, including Safari which at this moment has 4 windows open with a total of 37 tabs between them.

Anyhow, don’t even consider 16 or 32 GB RAM, it will be a waste of money. OS X is amazing at managing memory. I added the 8GB into this machine, on top of the 2GB it came with. 10GB total, and with all my apps running (including Vista running in a Parallels VM with 2GB RAM dedicated to it) I have 3GB of RAM free, and my swap memory on my hard drive has not been touched at all, once.

So if you plan on running a VM, as well as a ton of other apps at the time time – like I do – you will only need more than 10GB if you plan on doing more than I do at the same time, which is pretty rare ;) If you absolutely want to have all your RAM slots filled, go for 12.

Just my two cents.

Well, his two cents may have saved me $2,000. Now, it’s just figuring out where to go for the Mac Pro RAM (and no, I’m not going to Apple for it)… and deciding how much I’m really going to get.

I’m really leaning towards 16GB for forwards compatibility, but wouldn’t 32GB give me bragging rights? :)

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