I'm not a hater. I just can't justify spending twice as much on a Mac to solve problems I have never encountered with a PC.

Seems the PC haters are the ones that have switched and need to justify doing so somehow. Two way street.:-)
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Touche.:-)

No regrets here.
Still paying for it two years later but no regrets.
I had many crashes due to viruses on PCs. That, coupled with minimal tutorials to assist turned me away.
iPhoto and iMovie sold me on my Mac for my purposes. iDVD was just the icing on the cake.
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I just made the switch 2 weeks ago. I love my new Mac. I actually got my old PC running again with a new hard drive because the old one took a sh!t on me. I dont hate the PC but the Mac is so much more user friendly. As for the price difference....you get what you pay for.
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if you can swing for it get the macbook. switched to apple 5 years ago and haven't regretted it since.

And there is no reason you would ever need 16GB of ram from what you said you will be using it for, Christos.

and if you buy your ram from crucial and don't have apple install it, its not expensive at all :-)
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I listened to all of you guys and did this and upgraded mine for around $40.
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First thing: DON'T GET LINUX. Nothing wrong with it, but if you have to ask, the answer is always NO.

Now on to the fun stuff. Despite the obvious humor in the picture below, this is by far the most accurate way to describe things, and REALLY should guide your decision Christo. This post is a bit long because I tend to ramble, but I think you'll get the idea.

I'm not a hater of the fruit, I grew up on PCs and I worked in the photo & journalism industry for three years and used macs extensively during that time.

What I will tell you is this: It sounds like you should get a Mac. You would probably be pretty happy with Windows 7 (I won't discourage you), but it sounds like mac is the better way to go for you, based on the things that you have listed that you need the laptop for. You will pay a bit more than you should, BUT complaining about that is like complaining that you went to Saks Fifth Avenue and paid too much --> don't like it, shop elsewhere, you knew the price going in.

NOW that I've told you to get a mac and established that I'm not a hater.... I'll say that I will NEVER, EVER, under any circumstances, get a Mac for myself.

And here's where the fun begins.... to really evaluate the difference between a mac and a pc with as little bias as possible, you have to be honest with yourself, keep from being unnecessarily offended, and separate things out.

The analogy in the picture, if you can not be offended by it, is stunningly accurate. Ridding a motorcycle is not for everybody. If I asked a guy whether he was qualified and possessed the skills required to race a Ducati motorcycle at 150mph+, he would probably say no (although he sure as hell would want to!). This is not saying that he's stupid, its just saying that racing that thing requires a very specific skill set that many people do not have. Far too often in the mac versus pc debate, it becomes a matter of "well, you're just not smart enough to operate a PC". But this is not true. It has nothing to do with intelligence, so don't get offended!

It has everything to do with what YOU need and want, and whether you have the skills to do it. Racing a bike at 150mph is fun (for some)! BUT its NOT free! If you're not willing pay for regular maintenance on that bike, and get it tuned up and running properly, and put the time into learning how to ride it safely at 150mph, THEN you shouldn't own the bike!!!!

If you DON'T know how to ride a motorcycle or want to invest the time and money to keep it tuned at peak performance, and just want the damned thing to WORK every time you turn it on, then buy something that does what it's designed for. To switch to cars, I own and love my Jeep. I don't complain that's its slow, I relish that it has 4x4 and owns the road in the winter. If I wanted a fast zippy car, then I'd go buy a sports car, with the understanding that there was a trade-off in that I might have trouble the next time a snowplow came by.

OK, so I've said the same thing three or four different way and rambled on long enough... I think you get the idea. Two different products, two different uses & users, and a whole hell of a lot of people that can't understand that last bit without getting offended. I learned PC and learned it good. This required time, effort, and a few bruises & injuries along the way. As a result of that investment, I get to enjoy the performance of my 150mph supertuned (overclocked) Ducati, virus free and purring like a champ.

oh yeah, and :-), don't get the memory upgrade from Apple, get it separate.



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I say go with this.

The Macbook Pro hardware is impressive. I love mine.

I do miss Windows on occasion(specifically minor irritations with OS X) and putting it on there with Bootcamp is the best of both worlds imo.

:-)
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I got mine with a huge student discount and a free ~250GB Ipod Classic plus a free printer which I sold for about 75$.

All in all, I was out the door with a 13" Macbook Pro with OS X 10.6 /w 4GB of RAM and a new Ipod Classic for 980$.

So for me, the price was justified, because I couldn't get anything similar from a PC in the price bracket, but then again I'm a student :-)
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Well I have a friend that works at the apple store. So he is willing to give me his discount for a laptop. It will save me at least 15%, possibly more. I'm prepared to pay the prices of Apple.

Great way to put everything Francis :-) big help for sure. I'm just wondering if I should wait more and play around with windows 7. Between my brother and my Father one of them should be getting it on their laptops/desktop shortly.
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I have both platforms in my household and use both. I prefer the Windows machines for almost everything. There are never any issues with compatibility, things simply run as installed. The only advantage of the Mac is that they are very easy to learn. Navigation is relatively simple once you figure it out, but no easier than using Windows Explorer. I agree with the others about the quality of Apple's online tutorials. Microsoft simply doesn't have any thing that can compete.

I have never encountered a virus that penetrated my firewall and defeted my anti-virus software. Keeping both updated is of vital importance to anyone running Windows. I'm running Windows 7 now and it has a self-contained security suite (Microsoft Security Essentials). Microsoft know that the vast majority of the virus writers are targeting their software so they seem to be doing something about it. Malicious coders target the most users they can - hence Windows machines, not Macs. Now with the proliferation of the iPhone there have been viruses written specifically to target them. If Apple succeeds in getting a bigger slice of the pie, coders will begin writing viruses/trojans/worms for OS-X.

Windows Live Photo and Movie Maker programs have very similar functionality and are equally easy to use. Again, Apple will hold your hand through every step of using the software where Microsoft will not. The help features are there, you just have to dig to find the answers.

I cannot think of one area where the Mac outperforms the Windows (7) machine to the degree that justifies paying more than double. Macs are easy. Windows has a steeper learning curve. The decision is yours. My advice is to find a quality machine running 7 and give it a spin.
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I agree with getting your memory from Crucial. Of course, I'm a bit biased, because I used to work for the manufacturing portion of the business: Micron. :-)
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What would be a quality machine? I'm not crazy about Dell. Sony? Lenovo? HP? Toshiba?
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That is another feature of the Mac that outdoes Windows - only Apple makes them, so there isn't anything to compare them to other than themselves.

For simplicity, I usually buy off-the-shelf HP machines. I have had several and have been satisfied with all of them. The key is more in the components than the manufacturer. Almost all of the manufacturers make a very wide variety of machines. Prior to any purchases, I research the current (read - next week's obsolete) processors and compare them. I'm not currently in the market, so I don't have the specs an what's available now.

Check with one of the geeks in the computer store (MicroCenter is my favorite - they seem to know their products). As long as the processor is a mid to high end one and the machine has sufficient RAM, you should be OK. The other components (video processor, sound, etc) usually are on-par with the processor.
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:-)

I can't believe how fast the startup and shutdown is.
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Since 1986 I have always used a Mac, just so my allegiance is clearly stated.
Like others have said, I would recommend a Mac based on what you plan to use it for.
I also have windows 7 installed on my imac at home and, from what I've seen, it is a solid OS.
The beauty of having a Mac is you can run both.
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Get this, or something like it
http://www.amazon.com/N61VN-A1-16-In...=106Y6QZEHK8CX
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Which is why even on OS X I run an antivirus. :-)

And FYI people would be amazed at how many viruses, worms, trojans. etc are currently out there... directly targeting OS X.

Fraction of whats out there for PC's? Sure, but it only takes one to F up your system :-)
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Miller Lite is fine. :-)
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Yes to the above really. Good and bad equipment from all of them. More important, yes to THE ABOVE. Add in Acer and Asus. Point of the matter, Stay the hell away from off brands. KEY POINT, talk to a tech guy.

I was shopping today fora new computer for my shipping bench. browsing two different sites. One of them had good machines... the other (same brands) had shitty machines. And by shity, I don't mean unreliable, I mean under spec'd and guaranteed that whoever buys it will HATE his life. For example, a Vista machine with only 1gb of ram. That's damned near criminal IMO.....



Oh and PS: I don't use A/V on my windows box. Gotten one virus in the last 4 years....
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One of these days :-) .....
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