Thought I would bite the bullet for one of the new trashcan MacPros, which in the configuration I need is about five grand or so. Then I start looking at older MacPro towers on Craigs and E-Bay with plenty of ram and disc space, and the price difference is considerable (like, a nice round figure, about 1000). That's a big difference. How soon does the collective think that the old towers will be unusable when the processors can no longer handle whatever Photoshop is down the line? That's all I really want to do, btw, run Photoshop and Lightroom, and a printer off to the side. I don't need all the power to run video or any other complex graphics that the new trashcan does better, and speed benchmarks have gotten a little silly these days - I can wait a few seconds for files to open or other common functions to complete on the older units. What's the rush, after all?
Even at a thousand, if I can get three to five years out of the machine, that will still be a considerable savings over that time. Then I re-assess and buy whatever Cupertino has come up with then, right? I just don't want to get stuck with a machine that is effectively unusable, like my old G5 that faded away a few years ago.