[Swordmaker]

I’ve “touched” and used Mac’s and they’re not that much better and have just as many use issues or problems as Windows PC’s. And until they got Intel CPU’s were slower than most PC’s.

"Touched"... what, you played with one at the store? Quite frankly, your statement that Macs have "just as many issues or problems as Windows PC's" shows that you really have not used a modern Mac because it flies in the face of almost every Mac users' personal experiences.

As to speed, it depended on what you were doing, when, and the fact that Apple's processor upgrade calendar was slower than the multitude of PC makers who could slap the latest and fastest processor in to an off-the-shelf motherboard the day after it came out. Apple G5s were not "slower than most PC's"... at first they were faster than anything on the market and later they were still faster than MOST PCs but slower than a small number of high end PCs.

[garyhope]

“touched” a Mac was your original phrase.

I didn’t just “play with one at a store”. I have many friends who use and own Macs (I even used an original Apple Lisa back in the 80’s, and by the way the old Commodore Amigas were better than the Macs of that era) and I’ve used Macs many, many times and didn’t just “play” with them and still find them to be just computers good or bad and in many cases slower than many PC’s.

Macs and some Apple products are in many cases beautiful and elegant (more so than most PC’s) pieces of good industiral design but in real world use are not any better or in many cases as good as or as fast as good PC’s for some applications. Plus there are many specific software products (like lots of financial trading platforms) that are not ported over to the Apple platform and are necessary to the business world.

Macs are good for graphics design and music (but not the only ones) but for many other uses, not so.

Despite all this, I am still considering buying either a Mac laptop or mini with the Intel C2D CPU to use when I visit Mac based friends and to take advantage of a computer with a CPU and computer that uses both OS’s and can handle my financial programs. Plus the MacBook’s are small, affordable and light. Better than my old 8 pound PC laptop which is heavy, slow and has limited RAM.