Apple or PC?

As a loyal Mac-Jihadist, I have to agree with the comments regarding Macs being as vulnerable to viruses as PCs.

I've been the victim of a few nasty Apple bugs, and I believe the only reason there aren't more of them is because people that write these little nasties want to effect the largest group they can. With the mass of PCs out there, it's a no-brainer.

Also, since I push around files that get as large as 4-5 gigs when working, I bring my G5 running OSX to its knees quite regularly. On the other hand, when surfing and puttering around in iMovie, iDVD, etc. on my little Cube, it remains quite happy.

FWIW I just got my new Power Book 12" with 8x superdrive, 1.25 Gigs RAM and 100GB hard drive, using student discount, it came to $1900, a lot of computer for that, and I couldn't be happier with it!

I must admit with some of the other posters, depending on your career, you might have to deal with PC's.... I hope for you that isn't the case, if you have the choice, go MAC!!!

Brimac, thank you for your input. It's great to see an Apple dealer here.

That being said, I love my Dell!

However, for me, it's not as simple as that. I use a PC, which also runs MVS (IBM Mainframe) and a Sun Solaris Workstation (Solaris 9 - UNIX) at work, and have owned more than a few Macs as well. My next computer will just about definitely be a Mac.

Rather than look at this in the usual "us versus them" paradigm, since I have to work on a bunch of operating systems, I can see the pluses and minuses of each. The Mac would be a fantastic choice here, which I hope provides you with years of pleasure. But, you aren't going to have a disaster on your hands by running a Windows based PC - they do just fine.

My son, who is a PC guy, ran most of the Microsoft systems, including DOS, Win 95 and 98 and ME. Windows ME was a real stinker for us after owning Win 95.

Must say though, Windows XP Pro is the best thing Gates has done (based on my experience with it). If Apple had failed, as some predicted, that is the system I would have gone with.

As it is, we have the choice of Mac OS9, OS X and Windows XP. Better than ever software programs and at lower cost than what we paid a few years ago.

The Mac is of little interest to the hackers, as yet. It also does not have the backdoor entry problems that MS introduced stupidly.

I am in a department that is primarily Wintel. Macs can work easily with them if they have current software. All of them have to work with software on the server to assure that proper software is being used. When the server goes down so do they. They get very irritated when they see me still working and they cannot.

I think that the Wintels have copied the Mac operating system closely enough that they are now useable. I think also that Apple has cheapened their machines enough to compete on price, but the Department still has rooms of PCs that don't work and a few working macs that are obsolete. I have three macs of various ages. Just today I went into the storage room and found another old mouse as my five year old one failed.