MacPro: The cheapest high-end workstation?

When you think of getting a bargain on workstations, Apple is probably the last vendor that comes to mind. Yet, with the latest update to the company's professional lineup--the new MacPro workstations and Xserve servers--the consumer-centric company has suddenly gotten very competitive in the high-end market. ZDnet's George Ou was spec'ing out a MacPro when he noticed something highly unusual. "[D]uring my research I came to a stunning conclusion: [the MacPro is] the cheapest name brand dual-processor workstation on the market IF you know how to buy third party memory and storage," Ou writes. "It's not only cheaper than the slower $3817 Dell workstation I looked at earlier this month, but I can't even build a cheaper generic PC clone unless I switched to a lower-end CPU." Of course, there are cheaper workstations to be had if you're willing to downgrade from the latest Intel Xeons but if bleeding-edge is what you're looking for, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better deal than the latest Penryn-based towers from Apple.

For more on the MacPros:
- see this ZDnet article