Thanks Esther

 It is considerably faster than my G5 dual 2Ghz tower- so it is still an upgrade-but I would rather have saved a bit longer and bought a real MacPro Early 2009. I really wanted to run Vue 8-which is MacIntel only-so I had been looking at iMacs and Minis- so at least I did better than the mini. :-)

  The new 27 inch iMac is gorgeous! But I am biased against all-in-ones. I did buy a 23 inch Samsung LED so at least it has the same gorgeous display.

   The good news is that they ARE going to debut a  new MacPro in the next few months- at least according to MacRumours.