Help a n00b spec a MAC

[nahwiseup]

Hi Guys,

Long time lurker here... think I'm ready to try the dark side. I need some information to nudge me in the right direction.

My current desktop usage and spec:
22" wide-screen driven by this deal-of-the-week from competitor
Vista Home premium. Apart from a slow starter it is fine.

80% Web browsing FF3 and now mostly Chrome.
10% Working with digital pictures from my canon ixus or S3
10% Music all WMA files created from CDs - so no DRM. Will flip4mac play?

Sky broadband so using the wireless on this, although I have optional Ethernet over Power if I cannot use wireless. Also have 80211n draft 2 d-link router which i can use as a wireless access point

Would plan on vmware fusion to sort out any windows peculiarities i need.

In particular some advise around suitable specification and support.

I like the price point of the mac mini (in a try before you buy sort of thing) but it looks sort of weak to me... again used to Windows, am I right? How heavy is OS X?

However mac mini price seems almost like a sucker punch to me, add on the extra 1GB or RAM and mac kb/mouse and price jumps from 399 to 522.

If it worked out I would have to buy a new decent monitor at about 150 quid which creeps into iMac price range. (in order to free my PC to be used elsewhere in the house)

I like the form factor of the iMac - so whatever happens there I would be happy with it if I had to put Vista on it.

However whenever I get to the point of settling on mac mini/iMac/Mac Pro (yes I have been thinking of treating myself) I can't help but feel I am cleverly upsold to a model by a clever sales man.

Apple care- is this as useless as a competitor fix it all plan to cream the masses of money or is it actually worth it?

Thoughts?

Read the FAQ

 

[nahwiseup]

Thanks for the replies guys. Think I will get an iMac soon.

Sorry about the competitor references!

Only thing stopping me from going Mac Pro is the wife... however if I can prove the mac via an iMac purchase I can swing that over to her, and get the beast for myself!

 

[nahwiseup]

24" iMac it is then. If you are cunning you can get the Higher Education Discount as well.

However, a kitten will be killed if you put Vista on it. Why would you need to?

I would need to put Vista on it if it does not work out for some reason. It should not, and I will put every effort into learning this new OS.

I am a realist however. I spent a year at uni on SuSE, writing and compiling code, and wrote my thesis in OpenOffice. That journey was both fun and frustrating at the same time. But I had the safety net of dual booting into XP.

I even worked for a couple of weeks on a self compiled Gentoo install.

Since then it has been XP and Vista all the way - its just now I'm willing to diversify at home.

However nowadays with VMware fusion and its unity technology (I use Workstation 6.5 with a XP virtual on my Vista work laptop for some apps that don't play nice on Vista) the risk is taken out of a Mac purchase IMO

The only Risk I see is not keeping your Wife onside on your "expensive PC" (not my words, I'm not flame proof!!)

Bottom line, is I want to try OS X, and can be bother hackintoshing it. At some point in the near distant future I want to build a monster of a machine or get a Mac Pro... depends on my experiment here.