So, here's my question.
Well, first, my situation. I'm a semi retired retoucher/photographer, have been using Macs since they were affordable and powerful enough for companies to replace high end Scitex and Crosfield stations in the early nineties. Always had the luxury to work with the latest stuff that the lease terms or bean counters allowed, which is a lot, and never had to think about what to buy, they just plopped it on my desk one day and hooked it up. Cool, new Mac. When I left work, I thought I was going to have to buy a trashcan in '13 for about 6-7000, but was mercifully steered towards a modified 2010 tower from Other World Computing (3.46 6 core, 32 GB memory, 500 gig SSD) for much much less by a board member here (thank you, forgot your name), and have been happy since. I spent most of the budget on an EIZO CG277, which I thought, and still do, is a more important component. All flows to an Epson P800, which I could just kiss, it's so good and reliable. I only use this thing for Photoshop/Lightroom, and it works just fine, for me, although I just learned that I can't progress further than Sierra 10.12 and on to Mojave because of some sort of hardware glitch or something, tried everything, but, end of the line for OS progression in this thing, it seems. Still works great, I can do whatever I want to do, maybe a bit slow working with 1 gig plus files, but, what's the rush? But, I do know that, eventually, I will have to upgrade to keep up with the OS and Adobe train of "improvements". That's why I am thinking of a new computer.
So, can I just get by with an OWC trashcan and external storage array of some sort? This new cheese grater is way overkill, right? It's not as though Photoshop and Lightroom are becoming that much more complex - seems to me that they have hit a wall of sorts, which is fine by me. At least slowed down tremendously in requiring a lot of expensive hardware to run. I could care less about video, which seems to be the market for Mac Pros since the mid aughts. Haven't even played a video game since the original Atari. So, what I need is a solid computer that is maybe a bit quicker that what I have now, is affordable, and I can depend on for at least five years, maybe ten. As someone said earlier in this thread, this introduction may very well tank the value of the trashcan, so, hey, here I am with my card to take advantage.