Apple or PC?

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.

I will be using it for research, writing papers (word/excel), sometimes taking notes in class, music, some photo editing, the odd DVD on trips, and internet surfing.

Hi, sorry I'm late to this thread and haven't had a chance to read the other posts, but if you're doing music and imaging work plus need reliability for school and don't want viruses and all the 'net goodies, GET AN APPLE.

I used various PCs for years and years incuding my college career; one was a PIII laptop that was rather top of the line in its day (and expensive) and they were all just crap. They'd break down for seemingly no reason, were always unstable. I lost papers, you bet. I missed online course posts, yes. The internet did a real number on them, too--I din't yet know about browsers like FireFox and Avant. Also I used to try to do recording work on them and that was always a real PITA. The software never got along with the herdware, the computer didn't like the software OR the hardware, they were glitchy, they'd crash, files would vanish, tracks would get lost, and we had lots of downtime. Worst of all, 2-3 years and they're bunk.

Then I sucked it up and paid the price for a Mac G5 last summer and never looked back. I will never go Windoze again. Even XP seems primitive and unstable compared to OS X. It's just a rock solid and very smooth OS. Absoultely excellent. Macs cost a little mroe but the quality is apparent! If you're an audiophile then you're already used to paying more for a quality piece.

I'll tell you this: in my closet I have two laptops, the aforementioned fancy pants Windows one and an Apple Powerbook from c. 1995 running OS7. The Windows one was glitchy right out of the box and was barely usable after a year and a half; after two and a half years it died completely, a few grand down the tube. The Apple is out of date but still works like a champ!