First of all, I've nothing against PCs. I use one at work (Dell) and we get along most of the time very nicely. But a few months ago my five year old PC (one I had built for me) started to give up the ghost. I was only running with 256 RAM, a pretty slow proc and an 80 GB Western Dig HD. I got more than my money's worth but it was time to buy again.

I debated, researched, read a ton of forums and talked to all of the IT guys at work (all pretty big PC fans but then again, that is their world.)

But Vista sealed the deal for me and so I went with a Mac. When I write that Vista sealed the deal I say so fully aware that I could have still opted for XP had I gone with a Dell or HP. Dell is still selling PCs with XP but your options are limited (sound card, vid card etc....) but I was terrified of Vista (a sentiment I am hardly alone in expressing) so I went with a Mac.

If you've never been to a Mac store, it is really a pretty cool experience. I set up some time to go in and meet 1:1 with a rep which gave me that opportunity to understand some of the differences I'd be dealing with. They were helpful and within an few hours I had my new Mac.

I went with the base model (1 Gig of RAM, 250 Gig HD, 2.0 m-proc and a 20 inch monitor.)

Out of the box there is one cord (wireless mouse and keyboard) and the initial boot (after standard updates) had me working on the machine within 20 minutes.

I'm not here to shill for Apple but having never used one (OK, the last time I did I was in 8th grade and was amazed by simple commands that allowed me to see my name in green 100 times fill the screen) I have been very impressed with how user friendly the iMac is. The newest OS from Mac is X (Leopard) and for what I need to do, it is perfect. Not even the lack of more RAM or a faster proc have slowed the performance in any significant way.

I have already been able to create a fairly easy blog (just for my own rants and writings) and last night sat down in iMovie and created a picture "movie" with some of my music.

NOTE: There have been questions about the transfer of iTunes music from one machine to another. Prior to the purchase of the Mac I purchased a pc/mac compatible external HD. I transfered all of my iTunes (15 gigs of music) to the external and then when I got my iMac, loaded it back. iTunes basically created a message that I had used one of my five transfers by doing so. So, it appears that transfer one was from my old PC to the external drive and then from the external drive to the Mac was another transfer. So, I have a couple left but I was VERY happy in that the entire library of music just populated perfectly into iTunes (which comes pre-loaded on all Macs) without the slightest glitch. Same held true for my docs (which were in both Open Office and in Word.)

I purchased Word and Excel for the Mac and so it felt good to have some old friendly "faces" present.

Overall I've been VERY happy with my purchase. There is not much I can't do with my Mac that I regularly did with my PC. I'm not a gamer so that was not an issue (and had it been I would have gone with a good PC) but again, considering what I use a computer for, this has been great.

The cost was a bit high (including .Mac just over 1300 with tax) and there is no doubt that I could have gotten a lot more Dell for the same money.

I just thought I'd throw my .02 out there regarding this purchase. I'm not a "tech" guy and my knowledge is pretty limited but I did do a lot of homework before I handed over my debit card. I am enjoying the challenges of learning a new system and of trying to figure out what all of the Mac lingo means.

It's been fun so far, so whether you are a die-hard PC user or a Mac user:

Cheers!!

Drew

well the new x86 architecture on the macs allows you to run xp on it also (dual boot)... with leopard you have the ability to load xp on your mac if it was sent to you with jaguar (for some odd reason) you need to use bootcamp... but its free... you could also run linux on it so you could have all three on same machine (triple boot w00t!)... i wasnt crazy about the switch from ppc to x86 at first but the fact that this should allow easier porting of software to the os it probably is going to be a big help to apple in the long run... have fun with your new toy and join the support forums at apple.com ...good place to find information on your new mac.

http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa