When you're thinking desktop computers for business users, the name "Apple" doesn't often spring to mind, but the company that pioneered the home computer is now offering a powerful workstation designed for high-end graphics designers and small business owners. The Mac Pro offers extreme performance, but at a fairly hefty price tag of $2,499.

Powered by twin Intel Xeon dual-core processors, the Mac Pro gives you four processing cores on two chips each running at 2.66GHz. This provides exceptional power for multitasking and intensive tasks like graphics and video editing. Apple lets you drop those processors down to twin 2.0GHz chips or step them up to 3GHz. For most business desktop users, the standard configuration will be the most cost effective.

Apple pairs, perhaps triples, those processors with a healthy 1GB of speedy 667MHz DDR2 memory. While that's plenty for an average business user, if you're picking one of these Mac Pros up for high-end graphics work, you may need more RAM than that. Luckily, these desktops can handle up to 16GB of memory on its eight DIMM slots, although it would more than triple the price of the system to get there. But you can double the memory to 2GB for a more reasonable price should you need more RAM room.

Apple touts these business computers as major storage machines as well. The default configuration ships with a 250GB 7,200rpm drive, but the Mac Pro has four hard drive bays, meaning it's capable of an amazing 3 terabytes of storage on four 750GB drives. Again, that's a fairly costly upgrade as these drives add about $600 each to the system price, but you can double the starting drive to 500GB for $200 as a compromise.

Apple includes a SuperDrive optical drive inside these business desktops. This double layer DVD writer offers sound DVD burning speeds and supports DVD+R media, capable of burning to extra-large 8.5GB disks at speeds of up to 8X. You can add a second SuperDrive if you'll be creating a lot of media, which lets you burn two DVDs at once or make disk-to-disk burns more rapidly.

These business desktop computers start out adequately enough on the graphics card side, offering an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT video card with 256MB of dedicated video memory. Again, that might not be enough for high-end graphics designers, so you can upgrade the card or add a second one. The Mac Pro comes with a double-wide PCI Express x16 slot that lets twin video cards work in tandem for a major performance boost when handling graphics or video, and you can hook up multiple displays for true multi-tasking.

Speaking of displays, Apple doesn't include one at the starting price. It would be a shame to connect this beast of a business desktop computer to a plain CRT, so Apple recommends one of their Cinema widescreen displays. The 20-inch LCD starts out at nearly $700, but it's beautiful to look at.

The input devices aren't substandard either. You get the Apple Keyboard with its multimedia controls and the Apple Mighty Mouse, an impressive four-button input device with an intuitive scroll ball. You can go wireless with these devices for a reasonable price, though you'll have to add Bluetooth capability to the business desktop computer at additional, albeit minor, cost.

Connectivity is quite impressive on these desktops. There are dual gigabit Ethernet ports for connecting to high-speed LANs or broadband modems. There are five USB 2.0 ports, two Firewire 400 ports, and two Firewire 800 ports--half of these up front--for connecting high-speed peripherals to the system. And audiophiles will love the digital audio input and output.

Your Mac Pro comes with Apple's Mac OS X by default, but you can also make it a server by upgrading to their UNIX-based server operating system. A 10-client license runs you an extra $499, and includes management tools and open source applications for handling the needs of a small business or a computer lab.

Apple offers a one-year limited warranty on the Mac Pro, but this can be extended to three years by adding the AppleCare Protection Plan for $249.

Apple's Mac Pro isn't the least expensive desktop computers for business users out there, but it might be one of the most powerful options for graphics designers and video editors.


Pro: Extremely powerful, sky's the limit for most upgrades
Con: Expensive, monitor not included