Using on a regualr basis is as good as owning one. You don't have to own one to hang out on these Apple forums.
I have to disagree with you again I am afraid. The new MacBook/MacBook Pro makes me do a sex wee. I am not happy about the price though. Having used my brothers new MacBook Pro all I can say is wow!
Didn't think it would take me this long to get back!
Apologies in advance for all the self-annotations.. It helps with misinterpretation!
Ok, essentially I think whilst a Mac might help your average home user screw less things up, not nessecarily because it's harder to do, but because there are just less things out there to get them (Which could be argued to be a very good 'Investment').. For anyone who has half a clue about computing and keeping one ticking over (Anyone likely to be asking on 'Overclockers UK Forums'
) the money saved for a better spec machine would be considered the better investment.
Whilst Macs do hold their value (And i'm still not sure why they do this.. It's still all the same hardware that goes into them, and OSX running on anything could be matched with XP also running on anything), I don't think they hold it enough (Especially in the iMac, as you pay so much for it to begin with).
The previous example i mentioned with the Mac Pro was based around the time it took a computer to complete the "Retouch Artists speed test", by which the average 8Core Mac Pro system (New at the time - System cost for comparison was £2199) was posting times of around 24 seconds, whilst an average Quad Core PC build (Cost £600) was doing it in 18 seconds. The Guy made a comment about "What will yours be worth after 3 years? Thought so.. You could get half your MacPro investment back"... It basically surmounted to spending £3299 on 2 MacPro's over 6 years (£2199 on one plus half your investment recouped and put towards another), to £1200 on two PC's over 6 years (Assuming you got nothing back after the first one), only to run photoshop slower.. You could continue in 3 year loops if you wanted always assuming the PC would be worth nothing but you can see where it's going with regards to how much it would cost you. Future versions of photoshop using more resources may have changed this but it doesn't look like it's happening in at least CS4 for the Mac crowd..
Now the problem you have with the iMac of course, is in spec terms it doesn't exactly match up well to the MacPro or a PC, yet you're still paying more for it. Even when you take into account resale value.
I'm almost beggining to think I haven't been using Macs for the past 2 years, because some of the experiences posted on here are just completely contradictory to my own. Either that or i'm too used to how fast my computer handles my workflow, so anything slower really jumps out at me. I could kill a base spec 20" with very little effort once using a few more layers or higher resolution layouts etc.. The 24" with the 2.8ghz 'extreme' processor handled far more admirably, but then it obviously cost over twice what mine did back then, so i didn't see much point in buying one!
What it boils down to for me every single time, is Adobe Photoshop is not a platform specific program. I can switch between both platforms with ease, because it's always the same way to do the same thing (Save for a few shortcuts and menus, but even they are always incredibly similar, just add in the Apple key!). As Photoshop has no preferance on which Operating system to run on, it obviously only comes down to how much hardware you can throw at it. Which, at least for the forseeable past and future, will be the PC.
So if someone ever asks me what do i reccommend for running Photoshop, I can't reccommend an iMac, because I know i would be telling them to spend more money to do something slower.
Phew
