mac or dell???

[macmaniac01]

First time blogger...

Having recently sold my dell i have ponder crossing over and buying an imac. I previously owned a mac (last revision, PowerBook-G3) and have very fond memories of it. I then bought a dell which also served me well.

Now with the introduction of Intel chips, OSX 10.5 and imac's all-in-one form factor (i hate cables) i have warmed greatly to Apples again. However......

When i compare what i am willing to spend on an imac and what i can get from dell, i am left completely indifferent. I am prepared to spend up on the the latest imac i.e. 24" screen 2.8Ghz extreme (maybe even wait for the new penryn chips), upgrade to 4Gb RAM and throw a 1TB drive for good measure. the price for such a machine (in Australia) is around USD $3700 bucks.

Do the same exercise with optioning up a dell and you end up with an even quicker machine i.e 24" HD screen, Quad 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, Blu-Ray, 750GB HDD, ATI 2600XT and i can throw in my loose HDD laying around inside case.

You get the picture....

i will be using this machine for everything from emails to re-coding ripped DVD's and playing them on my TV and also running Windows only Apps.

I want it to be FAST and the computer must last me for several year. If anyone has managed to read this far and is able to give some good advise, i look forward to your reply and making the right decision soon. I have also considered a Mac Pro but do not want to spend that much.

Please help.

 

[richard.mac]

G'Day mate!

sounds like the Dell suits you fine but if your curious about Macs and Mac OS X get the iMac its specs are still pretty fast and will last you a while if you wait for the Penryns. everything you want to do you can do on a Mac.

you could consider buying a stock Mac Pro with a single 4 core Xeon chip if you not concerned about the graphics card... this will bring the price down a bit to A$ 3,059.90 which is cheaper than your iMac configuration but sacrifices the hard disk space. the great thing about the Mac Pro is its expandable so it will last you ages. its also got the Penryn chipset too.

keep in mind posting that in this forum there will be a Mac bias .

 

[bluedoggiant]

Wait for the iMac update, max out the high-end iMac, get parallels or VMware fusion. If you plan not to use windows a lot, and want to do gaming, buy windows for bootcamp. I think most of your apps will work on mac.

 

[arkitect]

Well, on paper it certainly sounds like you have to go for Dell…

Bear in mind though that there is more to the equation than just bean counting.
For an OS I would always recommend Mac OS X over a MS Windows setup. Always.

However, if your software bias will remain Windows-centric…

i will be using this machine for everything from emails to re-coding ripped DVD's and playing them on my TV and also running Windows only Apps.

…then get the Dell.

Personally I would get a refurb Mac Pro… with a Dell 24".

 

[AppleFan360]

The Dell sounds better but keep in mind that the operating system on the Mac is diffrerent thus making it difficult to compare the two as far as speed.

Honestly for the most part you can do the same things on a Mac that you can do with a PC and if you can't, there is always bootcamp, Parallels or VMWare Fusion.

 

[clyde2801]

Check your apps to see if they'll work on a mac, either boot camp, parallels or whatever.

My GF uses a CAD program to design jewelry, and it requires dual core processor, XP with 1 gig of ram, and vista with 2gigs of ram. With the ram requirement, parallels is out.

It also requires an nvidia graphics card. So even with boot camp, I can use a 24" white plastic imac, hopefully.

Let me address one question that I don't think has been addressed on this thread so far. How much is your time worth? You might save a few hundred or maybe a thousand by using a dell with windows instead of an imac with osx. Great. Wonderful.

You then bring that dell home. You'd better setup the firewall and malware protection on that puppy first thing if you're using it to earn a living. Of course, you'll have to spend time downloading the latest patches and updates for your malware protection on a regular basis. And you'll lose processor cycles as a result of your protection. The programs you'll be running to make a living will run slower as a result of that.

Let's not even consider that your machine might have Vista. Not enough room to discuss that debacle here.

Have you ever had to reinstall windows on a computer? If you've had a pc for a few years, chances are you have. Factor in half a day gone with trying to get info off of the system, scanning it to make sure it's not infected with anything, reinstalling the os, and then finding and reinstalling the applications.

Sorry, this has gone on longer than I wanted. Buy the Dell if you're forced to by mission critical software, or if you don't value your own time. Otherwise, get the iMac. Hope that helped.

 

[Tonerl]

If the Dell has Windows XP as an option, and you really need Windows, I'd go for the Dell. I wouldn't give a Vista PC houseroom even if you paid me.

I run an iMac & have just upgraded it to 4GB RAM. For Windows, I run VMware Fusion and XP. It suits my needs but I don't run games.

OS X 10.5 alone is worth getting a Mac for, BTW.