Thinking about making the switch

So im an avid PC user and have been that way for many years

But with the release of vista Im seriously considering making the switch and Im mainly looking for opinion's of those who have already done so and maybe point me in which direction to which machine I should consider

so here is what my primary computer uses are:
Web surfing
Minor Photo Editing ( photo shop)
Minor Video editing
Word processing
data basing
MSN messanger
Emails (outlook or somthing simalar)
Music downloading playing and burning

And the odd Steam Games mainly Counter Strike Source or Team Fortress 2
( I see there are a few options as far as emulating windows and allowing for this, how well does this work? and mainly how well does counter strike run?

other things
Im seriously considering the Imac 20"
- video ram is 256 is this dedicated or is it using the physical memory
-how well does the ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory run games (windows games)
-how many memory dims are there and are they hard to get at?
- I think its more cost effective to just get more ram myself from third party companys i can get 2x2gigs for like 100-$120+
- is the imacs video card upgradeable ?



With this all being said should i just stick to PC or make the switch!! ???
Thanks for all the help guys

sincerely
vivid

If you are mainly getting a new machine for gaming, I suggest getting a Windows, you will be disappointed with running games on boot camp / parallels / vmware etc.

naw not for gaming mainly just every day use i have a PS3 for that but I would still like the fact to be there if need be..

Well I went to a Macbook Pro after years of Windows, and I love it so far. The only thing that specifically made me go with a pro was the graphics issues since I'm a big gamer. I'd suggest going with Boot Camp rather than virtual, as no matter what people say, running in a virtual environment slows down the games. Although for other apps VMWare Fusion has been great for me.

I'm not sure the specs/cost of a iMac vs a Mac Pro or whatever the desktop options are to make that comparison.

Speaking from experience, you don't want to attempt to run Steam games in any of the virtualization options out there. I've tried Parallels, VMWare, and Crossover, and none of them were able to serve Steam games adequately. Boot Camp, or a Windows PC, would be your best option.

joshbrez said:

Speaking from experience, you don't want to attempt to run Steam games in any of the virtualization options out there. I've tried Parallels, VMWare, and Crossover, and none of them were able to serve Steam games adequately. Boot Camp, or a Windows PC, would be your best option.

Click to expand...

does boot camp run on its own partion ?? so am i to split the partion?

vivid said:

does boot camp run on its own partion ?? so am i to split the partion?

Click to expand...

When you setup Boot Camp it will partition the drive based off what you tell it to do. It's not like Windows where you need to set it all up before you install the OS. I haven't attempted to run any of my Steam games through VMWare, but they run rather nicely in Boot Camp on my MBP.

The iMac sounds like a perfect fit for you, and I'm sure you would be happy with one. It comes with one of the fastest web browsers out there, a great video editing program, a free trial of iWork (Mac sort of office suite) and a free trial of microsoft office 2008, a great e-mail program called Mail and of course iTunes. It should soot your creative needs very well and anything that needs windows you can just set up VMware fusion, or bootcamp (which will make an ajustable hard drive section for windows if need be).