Suggestions for newbie

[Hunter1]

My PC is about to crash, I am looking into switching to a Mac.

I use the computer for e-mail, surfing the net...with dial-up, photos, updating my website, and want to edit home videos.

What are your suggestions for a Mac?

I made my website with FrontPage; can I edit and update it with software that comes with the Macs?

How well does the video editing software/hardware work? Are problems common with the Mac? My current computer was suppose to do the videos, but I could never get it to work well for videos. My current camcorder is analog; I bought a plextor "convertX" with seems to work 1/2 of the time. The software is even less reliable. I copied a few VHS videos, then set out on my first home video project. After 50+ hours of work, the 1 1/2 hour video was ready....but I couldn't get it to burn to a DVD. My husband (and I) would be greatly upset if another computer does not work out for videos.

Dumb question here...Would you watch movies on you computer on a regular basis? I think the 24" screen is probably better than our TV, but I would worry about wearing out the drive.

I see there is a problem with iMacs freezing. My husband is against a Mac; buying one and having it freeze would not be good. I hope the problem is resolved before this computer crashes.

We tend to keep computers a fairly long time, not worried about have the latest and greatest. I bought my first computer in 1998 and second one about 2002. I'd expect a computer to last at least 5 years.

Thank you,
Karen

 

[adamfishercox]

As far as video software, Apple's is tons better than Windows Movie maker or what-have-you. The freezing problem has been fixed. You won't wear out the drive by watching movies... The drive is there for a reason

I'd recommend the iMac for you. If you have the money, go for the 24" 2.4 GHz model, and then buy a 2 GB stick of RAM (NOT from Apple) to bring it up to 3 for starters.

 

[ScottFitz]

I was in a similar position one year ago. I was a die-hard PC user. I bought my first ipod a few months earlier and was overwhelmed by how well it was designed. So, when I heard that you could boot into Windows XP on a Mac, I got interested. Very.

But, I'd just built a really fast core 2 duo PC and bought some high dollar video card and some Pinnacle software in an effort to produce highlight films of my son playing high school football (trying to get a scholarship).

I never could get the PC to cooperate. so, I gave the pc to my son for gaming and I bought a 17" screen iMac Core 2 Duo, 1 gb of ram.

Hear this... the video tools/suite that are in iLife (iDVD, iMovie) are flawless for what I do. I was a complete newbie at first and now I'm producing some very nice sports stuff.

There are a couple of things I do for work that I *have* to have a windows based machine for. so, for your Front page stuff, if you need to boot into windows, that option is available to you. I'm not sure how Front Page actually works.

The best little discovery for me was the ability to author webpages using iWeb in the iLife 06 suite. www.CelticAmps.com is my site. It's very basic, but I'm not a big web designer. The program is so simple to use, you might give up your Front Page after you mess with it.

Good luck. Print this out and have your husband read it. I'm a 46 year old guy that has been around PC's for a really long time. I'm very happy with this sucker.

 

[l33r0y]

Any iMac with its iLife08 suite of software plus Leopard will blow you away (speaking as someone who has just switched from a PC myself).

In terms of video, the only other thing you will need to consider is something that can import your video from analogue format into digital - a third party external device that will connect to the iMac (via USB or FireWire) that will encode the video in realtime into DV format (not MPEG).

However I would suggest you make the switch to recording direct to digital video as soon as you can as this will save you a lot of time in the future, not to mention a big step up in quality.