New member, possible switcher

Hey all, I'm very new to Mac's, and everything about OSX. I've always been a PC guy, and I'm at a crossroads where I'm looking into possibly switching.

I work for a Recording studio, and I want to build up my home equipment and do some of the smaller tasks here. I'm really trying to figure out which way to go, and I figured the mac forums would be the best place to look.

I'm looking at the mac mini (mainly because I'm on a very limited budget atm.) My current pc setup is a 2.8ghz Intel P4, 800Mhz FSB, 2g PC-3200 ram. Those are the pertinent specs.

Mini I'm looking at is 2.0Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 667Mhz FSB, 2g PC2-5300, Superdrive, etc. Comes with Leopard.

For the same $$ I can build a much more powerful PC, as an upgrade to my current hardware. So I'm really stuck, and I hope you guys can give my better information to help me decide, than "It just works". I look forward to chatting with more of you, thanks alot

Jay

Welcome to M-F Jay!

Well, it would be easier if you describe the kind of work you want to do with your potential Mac. MacMini has limited capabilities when it comes to multimedia. Rather you should consider buying an iMac. If you are referring to internet surfing and running apps. which require low graphic capabilities, mini should also be fine.

Video won't be much of a need. Most of what I'll be doing is audio editing, recording, Midi recording, etc. If I went mini, I'd go bluetooth for keyboard and mouse. Using Pro-tools, and an mbox mini audio interface. USB Midi capable Keyboard , and the mbox audio would take up 2 of the 4 available USB ports, and I'd have room for external drives for more storage and work. The reason I considered the mini and not the imac, was $$. I figured it would be a reasonable price point to get into a mac. The other thing is that Leopard isn't supporting M-Audio cards right now. SO that would be another issue I would need to look at.

First off, welcome to the forums. Secondly, I am recent switcher myself. I purchased a PC machine back in the spring...brand new Dual Core with 2GB RAM, 256 meg vid card, 350 GB HD, etc. It took about a month of using Vista before I couldn't take it anymore. The driver support is horrible. My machine was constantly pausing, and locking up. And even with the new hardware, the new machine ran just as slowly as the three year old machine I was replacing.

After getting an iPhone, I decided to give Mac a try. Personally, I am very happy with my decision. I will not argue that you can get a better equipped PC for the equivalent cost (as this was a large deterrent for me for a long time), but I will tell you that the Mac will run much faster and smoother than the equivalent PC. I also feel the Mac comes bundled with much more "useful" software (such as iLife) compared to the PC. Again, that's just my opinion, but I hope it helps you out.

Sean

I'm in the same boat here. 2 weeks ago I definitely was getting an iMac, than looked at the PC's again and for the same price I could build a rocking machine that would blow the iMac out of the water. Now I'm back to Mac- go figure!!!

What I like about Mac is it's something different and not like the others. If you like trying new things then it will be a fun switch.

Jay- I would go with a 20" iMac the cheaper one of the 2- 20" iMac's. Just ask Apple to put Tiger on it and send a Leopard disc with it so you can have it for the future.

Hi Jay and welcome I'm fairly new here and trying to work out which way to go as well. I would also suggest checking out the iMac 20" as you can upgrade the RAM to 4GB if needed and you will have way less wires all over the place.

I'm in the same position as you Airborneforest also I started my search in August and almost conviced myself I will go with iMac, then got another quote for a custom build PC. The build PC would save me like $800 compared to the iMac with an upgrade to 2GB RAM. The PC would even have quad duo core 2.4ghz.

But I think for me Dual Core 2.4GHz is plenty fast enough, having the PC at a cheaper cost with Quad core would be a bonus but really not needed. The cost is the difference. I'm also speaking NZ$ here.

I love the look of the iMac, no big case, less wires, no virus/spyware protection needed, slim keyboard and something new to try out for 4-5yrs.

Hey guys, and thank you all for responding!! I hope your Thanksgiving(s) were all enjoyable and nice. I appreciate the food for thought, and still have some research to do.