Is my dad crazy for thinking my boss would help pay for me to build a new computer?

[aldamon]

I looked at the stock configuration at Apple and they give you no wiggle room whatsoever. I was hoping to find a way to downgrade components, but nope. They've kind of got ya bent over so to speak. I have 5 computers (2 overclocked Q6600s, overclocked C2D, dual-core laptop, ASUS EEE) and I haven't even come close to $4000, let alone for one machine!?!? Granted the Mac Pro have Core i7s, but that's still nuts.

• Yeah, terabyte HDDs are under $100 now. No sense in maxing out HDD space at Apple just for storage.
  
• If you're looking to drive four screens, you'll obviously need two video cards. You said you wanted to game, but I'm not sure what games you're going to play on a Mac. Since it's a Mac, I'd get only one card with the machine stock and add the second card yourself. Any decent 2D PCI-E card should do. You don't need a high-end gaming card for displays 3 and 4.
  
• Get the other 3 screens somewhere besides Apple. They won't match the original, but who cares?

These ideas should save you a bundle but won't do much for that base price.

[BryceE]

I'm thinking I'm going to get it for work, I need to get out of gaming and all now. Wasted to much of my life on them. I still play the occasional WoW though.

Anyways, I'm looking at the Mac Pro Quad Core, and upgrading the memory to 8gb I think. I might go ahead and get two video cards from Apple and get 4 screens separate, since you can pretty much get 24" LCDs for a few hundred bucks now a days.

So, here's the config. for the Mac Pro I'm looking at.

The default 2.66ghz processor - included in base price
Upgrade the memory to 8gb - $250 (I might just add that myself)
1TB Hard Drive - $100 (or get the default 640gb for the OS and add the other 3 myself)
Nvidia Geforce GT 120 512mb x2 - $150 (Okish price I think)

All the other stuff (monitors, etc) I can get from Newegg. This brings the price to $2,999. Now, that I could somewhat afford, it'd take a while but I could do it.

Now that I've decided this is mainly for work, which I'll need a decent work computer for my video editing, web design, etc I might go ahead and get it now. I can also do my video work on here since it'd be a hell of a lot faster then this iMac my boss gave me -_-.

Now, for hard drive space, aren't 1tb's cheap these days? I'm thinking I could just get a few external ones and set them up with the others I've got. Video editing take up a lot of space .

For software, my boss has the corporte versions for everything just about and he's already going to allow me to use the software on the Mac if I get it, so that covers Final Cut Pro, Microsoft Office, etc, etc. I just need to get Adobe software for the web design.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by BryceE

I can write it off even if I don't have a business?

If you get a Form 1099 at the end of the year and pay all your own taxes you are already in business whether you like it or not. If you get a W-2 and have income tax withholding you are not although there are ways to deduct work related expenses.

When I bought a new computer I used a 179 deduction to write off the cost in one tax year rather than depreciating it across multiple years. You can also write off office furniture, office supplies, phone, mileage, etc.

I have my books set up around the Schedule C form and then at the end of the year I plug it all into Turbotax and it calculates everything. Easy peasy and you reduce your tax bill.

[Houston3]

BryceE, I'm not a computer person, but my son has his own Web Site company. he builds web sites for businesses. He buys all of his Mac's from e-bay, then up grades them as he needs to. He keeps his eyes on e-bay all the time looking for good deals.

I was helping him work on a couple of sites and my i-Mac was to slow so he bought one for me to use from e-bay..
It was less than a year old and he got it for less than half price of a new one.