Get a mac and never look back!
As you know Tony I have worked supporting the ICT industry (both educational and commercial) and found that the Mac was always far, far more reliable and capable than any of the PC variants. Although it used to seem more expensive, you got a lot for the money but it is not much more expensive now when you really compare like for like.
Sure the top most 'turbo charged Hokey Kokey 2000 blitzcrieg' would be faster but all the problems with card drivers, adding ports, software incompatibility with the version of the Windows OS etc always led to tears when the PC was heavily used.
Whilst a PC will work quite happily doing its businees it is when you ask big stuff of it that it can show its deficiencies. I am speaking from the experience of looking after thousands of the buggers not just the one in one home.
Then there are the problems of PCs and viruses, even if you have a virus barrier, there are issues if you do not automatically update the virus and malware definitions every day (with the amount and rate of new ones appearing you might need eventually to update more than once a day...industry does). Macs have always had very very few viruses. The PC world have always said for over ten years "Ah but Macs will get viruses someday..you wait" Well I have had to deal with precious little problems that were virus/malware on Macs. Of course if you run Windows on a Mac then you have to take the same precautions as with a normal PC. It is the Mac OS that is more secure.
Macs have been using intel chips so can scan work as purely Apple OS, or purely Windows or run Windows from within the Apple OS (very clever and very usable).
I love technology and I love things that work just as they should, so I know that there are PCs that say that they can do everything to even making your tea and all for a few hundred quid...I know I had one...........but I also know that when reliability and ease of use is concerned ( this is across the thousands of PCs and Macs that I have worked with, or worked on) I would chose a Mac every single time.
There will be people who might come back to this and say that they had a mac and it went wrong or there were issues with a batch of them. The Mac is not infallible but they are streets ahead of PCs when looked at over many many numbers of Macs and PCs. Nearly all of the problems that I had to fix on Macs were user related and not to do with the operating system or the Mac itself
Look for refurbished (Apple warranties) macs on the Apple website, look at 27 inch iMac and get a great deal
http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac. < Link To http://store.apple.com/uk...home/specialdeals/mac. iMac ...great computer, great screen.
I am happy to show you the way that they will transform your computing experience especially making movies, photo manipulation, music, general work etc. And you can run Microsoft Office either as Apple or as Windows if you wish.
I promise you....every person to whom I have shown how the mac really works....none, I repeat none have ever complained that they made the wrong decision when purchasing one (that is a lot of people!)
PCs, if you buy the fastest, most laden with gizmos, add in best quality 27 inch screen, will cost more than what an iMac 27 inch costs. But you will not find it lasts, or as easy an experience to live with. And you will have a large box that is not the best designed thing in the world either. iMac...... one thing on your desktop (besides keyboard and mouse or trackpad) basically the screen which is the computer. The Pc world have tried to copy this approach (Sony get the nearest in design) but they are nowhere near to the original).
Do I sell AppleMacs?...I used to sell AppleMacs..and PCs...guess which I had the most customer problems with..............
Mike 8D yes i understand where you are coming from but i dont have a PC problem as such.... when i bought my PC it was top of the range ish and it still is a lot more powerfull than most on the market now i took a risk (small one) in buying a Quad core i had to wait while dell decided to fit them.... that a side when my PC was sold home users didnt have HD films to edit and id be very surprised if your Macs are any different if you have a 3 year old top of the range mac somewhere i will lend you my camera and see if it can edit a movie in HD.. at the end of the day its not about reliability its about grafics processing power and im not that bothered i just mention it as part of a review for anyone planning to buy the same camera....... and we are talking editing...... cutting, rearranging, adding tittles, transisions effects etc.....when i plug my camera into my pc it will play raw footage perfectly it just takes time to prossess any changes... clearly because it wasnt designed to do that.... i can copy and burn a whole DVD film in the time it takes to roll a fag but thats proberly not the same as editing
