is Mac a good choice?

[lavendermint]

Hello guys, this is my first post here and i'm anxious to get some advice from any mac users. Here's my story: i'm a pc user thinking about moving to mac but not sure which mac i should get. i really hate glossy screens so that deters me from choosing iMac, and i'm afraid iMini isn't powerful enough for video viewing/editing, so that leaves mac pro, which i'm not sure if that would be a bit of an overkill for me as i don't do any design work. i'm also heard that apple charges a fortune for any repair so would like to know mac pro's expected lifetime. How long have you used your mac pro? any repair needed? and will any new desktops be released soon?

any advice is much appreciated

[chscag]

It does sound like the Pro is overkill for you. As far as Apple charging a fortune for repairs, no more so then IBM, HP, Toshiba, Dell, or for any other good quality machine. You can always purchase Apple care which extends the warranty an additional two years.

New machines from Apple? Probably before the holiday season but that's only my guess. No official word from Apple.

You may be better off buying a new PC and sticking with what you're already familiar with. From your post, I don't see a compelling reason to switch to the Mac platform unless you just "want to".

Regards.

[hughvane]

i'm a pc user thinking about moving to mac but not sure which mac i should get. i really hate glossy screens so that deters me from choosing iMac ... so that leaves mac pro, which i'm not sure if that would be a bit of an overkill for me as i don't do any design work.

I agree with chsaq, the Mac Pro is a 'monster' machine, very powerful. The fact that you're thinking about moving to Mac is significant. I would suggest that you reconsider an iMac. Okay, you say the glossy screen is off-putting, but viewed in the right situation eg. surrounding light, I think you may adjust to it. There's debate about glossy vs matte here: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/sho...ht=matt+screen

As for quality, reliability and expected lifetime, Macs have a very good reputation generally. Apple doesn't make the components. Just as with Windows machines, the computer is built from parts supplied by a number of vendors.

One other point about the Mac computer and MacOS generally - security! No nasty invasions from spyware, trojans and so on. Peace of mind.

So as not to appear hypocritical, I would love to own a Mac Pro but realistically I couldn't justify that decision, so I'll wait for the day that a G5 PowerMac becomes affordable (for me) .

[lavendermint]

Thanks a lot for you guys' sound advice. Yes, i dont have any compelling reason to switch to mac - i just happened to have a look at an introductory book about mac osx and was fascinated by the much nicer interface than windows os so would like to give it a try. And i'm not sure if you guys have the same feeling: the mac pro case just looks great and powerful to me, and it's so different from all the pc cases i've ever seen (maybe i haven't seen enough), my only worry though is that dust may build up inside the machine through all those holes! Do you have any problems with dust building up?

As for the iMac, can i hook it up to a pc so that i can use it as the mon for my pc when i need to?

And how about the ability of iMac / Mac Pro to play various video file formats, like mkv, avi, h.264, etc? i've heard that VLC player, Mplayer, quicktime with perian can handle them? but will they run as smoothly as on a capable pc?

[JohnMcClane]

yes...

[louishen]

The mac can handle just about any video you can throw at it, the exception being windows media with DRM

You cannot hook up that PC monitor directly, but there is a way to use it with screen recycler

http://www.screenrecycler.com/video.html

[macgig]

I had a G4 tower (now called mac pros I think) for 8 years... many serious upgrades I did myself. Sold to a friend and it's still working great today).

I have yet to meet any PC user that's had their PC for that long with absolutely no problems.

[lavendermint]

Thanks for the replies - it's interesting and helpful to know that. So it looks like i can only use my current pc mon as another mon for iMac but can't hook up my pc (the tower, not the mon) to iMac to display the 'pc stuff'.

And can anyone comment on the running noise level between iMac and Mac Pro? i suppose the latter should be noisier? Would that be a nuisance in a quiet working environment?

[Tahiti1028]

And can anyone comment on the running noise level between iMac and Mac Pro? i suppose the latter should be noisier? Would that be a nuisance in a quiet working environment?

The newer iMacs (G5 and above) are extremely quiet... if it wasn't for the screen being on, you would probably think the computer would be shut off.

[lavendermint]

Sounds cool! How about the Mac Pro? Anyone?