About to buy mac.. what do I need?

I'm about to buy my first mac...suggestions please!
Moving over from the dark side...
As my PC has bitten the dust after 5 years (is it unreasonable to think thats a poor return for money!?) I have decided to take the plunge and go Mac.

However.. my kids need to be able to take homework into school on memory sticks in Word format etc..so my question is:

Am I best off getting a Mac and having dual boot so they can use it as a windows pc, or wtll getting the mac and having mac office on it be sufficient for compatibility with school pcs?
Non of us are gamers so there are no software compatibility problems there (. I want a mac cos I'm fed up with viruses sneaking into my computer, and my hobby is photography so I am hoping that the mac will be better for my editing stuff. Obviously I'm going to have to buy some new software there so any suggestions for that too woild be great.

Can't afford more than £1200 ..will that buy the basic? What can I get for my money!?!
I am nervous about the switch but excited at the same time!!
Jules

I can't really advise, as I am in much the same situation.

After many years of PCs (started with an Amstrad PC1512) and Linux (started with SuSE long before they got swallowed by Novell), I bought a MacMini recently. I liked it so much despite the limited graphics (Intel graphics chip), so I have now ordered an iMac 2.66 GHz 20" screen, 2 Gb RAM, 320 Gb disk (if I remember correctly). I have received a confirmation email to say it has dispatched - so it should be here tomorrow before 13:00.

Getting quite excited in anticipation - I hope I chose the right one. I wish I had gone straight for the iMac first of all, instead of spending over £400 on the MacMini first. Then I could have afforded an even better one now.

I have to say that the Mini is amazing in itself - a PC with that spec would struggle to run XP, never mind Vista. It might manage Linux, but the GUI in Linux is also pretty demanding these days, so even that might not be too happy.

Let us hope we are both happy with our new Macs when they arrive.

I use microsoft office often on my Mac, and have never had an issue with compatibility between it, and a windows pc. It should work well...

Can't afford more than £1200 ..will that buy the basic? What can I get for my money!?!

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Definitely. I'd get the cheapest 20" iMac and buy some software such as MS Office and Aperture with the extra cash.

Or the 24" if you're feeling flush.

Before you plunk down serious change on MS Office, look at NeoOffice. It's free, and it will save Word, Excel, Powerpoint documents for you in the right format. It also saves in Opendocument format and multiple others. And did I mention it's free?

NeoOffice is somewhat resource-hungry, being a Java application, but I recommend using it until OpenOffice 3.0 comes out (this version will have a native Mac port). If all you need is a word processor, Bean is excellent. No need to dump money on Micro$oft products.

Nighthawk4 said:

The GUI in Linux is also pretty demanding these days, so even that might not be too happy.

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Which GUI are you talking about? Most GNU/Linux distros come with Gnome or KDE, which should run just fine on anything with at least 256 MB of RAM. There are some distros, such as Ubuntu, that come with the Compiz-Fusion window manager, which has lots of neat Vista-like effects, but is nowhere near as heavy as Vista!

"About to buy mac.. what do I need?"

Deep pockets and a willingness to compromise.

Charliesmomuk said:

I'm about to buy my first mac...suggestions please!
Can't afford more than £1200 ..will that buy the basic? What can I get for my money!?!Jules

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Do it! Okay, easy for us to say, many of us are committed evangelists for Mac, but read the Switchers Hangout section of this forum, enjoy and learn from the experiences of others. Cross-platform software compatibility is not the bogey it used to be or was made out to be.

Secondly, there' s a lot of help from Mac people in the UK as well as elsewhere. All you need do is ask the questions.

For that money - iMac. Don't know what prices are like in the UK. It would buy you this - iMac 24" 2.8GHz Intel 2GB/320GB/SuperDrive - in NZ.

I'm a high school student. All you need for your kids is MS Office:Mac and some Flash sticks. I'm not a photography person... so, no help there. But yeah. your kids should be ready for the PC school with just those few simple things. They don't need the whole Windows OS to be able to keep up. Just Office:Mac.