THis is a fraught topic and I do NOT want to encourage the discussion here about it. My email is in my profile and I'm happy to talk to anyone about what to get. I will say only a few things:
if you are confused and curious, go to a mac store and get a demo from the kids there.
If I were getting a PC, I'd hold off a few months because the successor to Vista, which is supposed to be much better than Vista, is only a few months off.
Bottom line: it doesn't matter much. The mac I got in Christmas of 07 has been on almost constantly and I haven't had a SINGLE problem with it, have no virus stuff, etc. SO I'm very happy with it. And the learning curve if you know a PC is not very high. The only variety of program you can't get for the Mac is some of the high level GAMES the kids play, and some of the office stuff that most of us don't need to use at home. I can give advice about specific programs for the mac if you want to email me...
OTOH - PCs of course can be gotten cheaper now, by a good bit.
I know people who would use nothing but Macs and those who will use nothing but PC. I have not used a MAC since the early days while taking a college course. That was also when I had to write a artistic program in DOS.
That is interesting that Microsoft is coming out with a new program so soon. I hope it doesn't use as much harddrive as VISTA. I heard it takes 2 gb just for it and a large amount of memory. That is a plus I hear for MAC - not so complicated.
All my software programs are for Windows only, so that would deter me from MAC.
That's what I thought, Charlotte, but you can buy a mac from macconnection with VM Fusion included; that lets you swing over to the PC side (it runs XP, i know, don't know about vista) and run your programs. I can't live without Spider or Photoshop or Quicken, all on the PC side.
There are 3 ways to use the intel-based macs (all the new ones, I think) with the pc operating system. Boot Camp comes as part of the mac system; that requires you to restart the computer to use the pc op. sys. And there's another one which I forget, as well as fusion. Fusion's only about $50 to buy in any event, and it lets you run whatever operating system you want (linux for instance), not just xp. You can set up different "spaces" - to get to my windows "side" I just hit a function key.
The mac has several things that come with it which are free.. a routine pdf viewer and scanner, but also a pdf printer. Comes with it. You can get at very low price a thing that lets you fill in pdf forms too, which is nice. I don't use any microsoft programs any more on the pc side (I do on my other computer, an older Dell laptop; I just wanted to see if I could live without them) - I use the "open source" word processor and spreadsheet creator, haven't really investigated the "powerpoint" program that comes with it - but that's all free, donationware. What I really like about the mac over the pc (apart from the lack of virus programs slowing everything down) is that it manages memory better than a pc. I currently have open Neo Office, Firefox, Safari, Filemaker Pro, Quicktime, and VMFusion. I could open Dreamweaver as well. Two gigs of ram. No slowdown. No need to clear caches, no need to de-frag. I have an external disk hooked up to do backups, which happen automatically.
A couple of things are annoying: you have to be careful to dismount exernal disks or it gets mad. The Macbook pro I have doesn't have but two usb ports so you really do need an extender. It doesn't have a phone jack; you have to buy one to send a fax from the machine. OTOH, I have it hooked up to a Dell monitor, with logitec wireless mouse and keyboard, all of which I already had with my previous Dell desktop. The mouse gives me the right-button which I absolutely could not do without, having been so used to using it on the PC. And, of course, being a laptop, it won't be as easily disassembled as my Dell optiplex in case of problems. So far there have been none.
Speaking of Mac - anyone watching 'Dancing with the Stars' and Steve Wozniak dance? He is horrible - worse than Cloris Leachman who was at least entertaining!
briegull--I could give you many reasons why Vista is a major non-seller. For example: after reinstalling my printer for the seventh time, I no longer turn the printer off. Also, if my keyboard doesn't respond, don't bother looking at the connections--just do a restart. And then the internet problems----
Lori, you and a host of others (most of the known world) have had a lot of problems with Vista, but I haven't. I guess I'm one of the few who likes several of its features. It is slow to upload, but once there, I find it easier to operate. Also, I have a wireless all-in-one HP printer-copier-scanner-fax and I've not had a moments problem with it and it is networked to two computers all the time (and my kids laptops when they come for a visit). I guess we've been very lucky.