[ambrose]

ping

[Agnes Heep]

For what it's worth, I have a feeling your experience with the Macintosh will be no better than what you're going through with the PC. But I hope not.

[DC native]

I am still trying to find my teeth, which dropped out of my head in amazement that you are so young and you have owned several computers. I am 47 and I can't afford a new computer!

The computer lab at the university which I attend is full of shiny new Macs. I am taking a class that involves heavy use of these computers. So far they have been nothing but trouble. I got so fed up this morning, I left the class early.

My 3-years-young Dell is rapidly becoming unusable due to the inferior product called Windows. They are all unreliable!

[Auntie Mame]

I have an PC running Windows 95 which I use strictly for surfing the web and email. It's located in the living room next to hubby's and we surf together and watch TV. I have never had a virus and never had much trouble with it, but I don't actually do much with it. I've found that when you start loading a bunch of crappy software and downloading a bunch of stuff including shareware from the web is when you start having problems on any computer.

However, when I want to actually do something, I use my little Mac I-Book (laptop), operating system Jaguar, which I keep in my office and use for my accounting programs and take it to work occasionally. Lately I've been hauling it around everywhere because my daughter's wedding pictures are on it so I can just open it up and start the slideshow (with music) and bore people to death with her wedding pictures.

I can plug it into my printer at work and print from there.

The new web browser, Safari, is quite a bit faster than IE which is still on it if I want to use it along with Netscape Navigator which I have only used a couple times. I personally haven't gotten into Appleworks very much. I use MS Word on my Mac for word processing, but the little I've used Appleworks it seems pretty close to Word. I also use Photoshop which runs beautifully on the Mac. Many of my documents are WP for DOS, MS Word for PC, and old versions of MS Word for MAC. I've yet to have any problem converting any of them. They transfer beautifully to my MAC word processing (MS Word).

I can't speak about video programs for the Mac, hopefully someone else will know more about that. I-Movie came loaded, I think it's a video program, and I took a class at the local Apple store which went over I-Movie and a DVD program and they seemed incredibly simple.

Everything is pretty intuitive on the Mac. I recently visited a friend who has one of those Airport systems and tons of Macs all over the house. She did something to my computer, took about two seconds and I literally was up and running on her network, just like that! I could see her harddrive and surf the web in just seconds. I know when we set my MAC up here at home I, myself, put in my numbers (somewhere) and it took about a minute to figure out and I was surfing the web here at home. The IBMs to set up, on the other hand, took hours and a professional computer person.

So, I would say go for a MAC.

The difference, to me, in the two computers is the IBM I use because I have to at work and because it's conveniently located in my living room and I've got very little running on it so not much can go wrong. My Mac I just absolutely love. I have to admit I still don't know the Jaguar sysem very well but I'm working on it. Even so, I'm able to figure out everything I need to do but to really take advantage of all its capabilities, well, I have a long way to go.

I've had a Mac since the old days, with my first being a little Mac Plus. I then graduated to a Quadra 605 and now the I-Book. By the way, the Plus and Quadra both still work just fine.

[daviddennis]

The Mac is definitely the right platform for you because you'll love Final Cut Pro. Nothing on the PC even comes close. If you're on a budget, they'll sell you Final Cut Express (FCP with all non-DV support removed) for $99 with the system. It does almost everything FCP does as long as you're sticking with the DV format.

Most of the other software is the same as you'll get on a PC, which is why you don't see much specific advice on it. For example, After Effects is the same lovable but incredibly slow program that runs on PCs, and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are the same as well.

Jaguar is the name of the operating system currently running on Macs. IE is one of many web browsers that work on the Mac; I recommend Apple's own Safari as a much more modern and sleek experience. Both browsers are included with all new Macs.

All Macintoshes have FireWire built in, which is all you need to capture video from a DV camcorder. If you don't have a DV camcorder, you've just gotten the perfect excuse to buy one :-).

For in-depth advice on Macs, I strongly recommend Apple Retail Stores if there's one in your area. The people are outstandingly helpful, and you can take all the time you like to try out various models. Their ability to help you after the sale, usually at no charge, is an outstanding aspect of using the Mac that should help your experience remain superior to the PC one.

Hope that helps, and let me know if you have more specific questions.

D

[big'ol_freeper]

Try this link:

Making the Switch From a PC to a Mac

[ShadowAce]

The other option is to save your hardware dollars and purchase a Linux distro that will run on your existing hardware.