As a longtime Mac user, I can tell you that even with the "base" quad-core model, the sum total of the parts works, and works well. Boot times are on the order of "glance out the window" quick, and I've yet to see a spinning beach ball -- though I haven't had time to put this Mac Pro through months of production-line work and application installs -- the kind of general build-up that can affect any computer.

I'm not a fan of a lot of the interface tweaks in Mac OS X 10.5, but overall, Apple has done a great job of further refining the OS so that it's a great companion to the powerful hardware. And if for some reason you want or need to run Windows, the Mac Pro, like all Intel-based Macs, can use or maturing consumer virtualization software such as or .

The metal cheese-grater look remains

The Mac Pro hasn't had a significant exterior overhaul for a while -- the new model's "cheese grater" case looks almost indistinguishable from the Power Mac G5 that usually sits under my desk. A few changes to the available ports are the most obvious differences: On the front there are two USB ports versus one, two FireWire 800 versus one FireWire 400 and an extra slot for a second optical drive. Out back, there are three rather than two USB ports, two FireWire 800 -- mine has one FireWire 400 and one FireWire 800 -- and a second gigabit Ethernet port. That's about all that separates them visually.

The internal hardware is arrayed in a similar way, though there was little to complain about in the first place. The Power Macs had an incredibly minimalist interior design, with most components cleanly arrayed with plenty of space around for airflow and fingers. The Mac Pro keeps the easy-access Serial ATA hard drive trays, allowing quick, cable-free configuration of up to four drives. (Apple also offers a $700 RAID card that allows you to set up a more secure, faster internal storage array.) Making things even easier is a new slide-out tray for the RAM and processors.