Moving to Mac...good idea or not?

Considering moving to Mac...tips or advice pro or con?

[Lvanhoff]

Hello,
I'm in the market for a new computer and considering making the the move to a G4 17" Power Book. I currently run my web design business on a Dell Inspiron 8000 with Windows XP. Does anyone have some general "great idea" or "terrible idea" kind of advice about this possible switch? It will be expensive to replace programs and make the switch, so I don't want to do if the general consensus is that it's harder to do web design or harder to run a business with a Mac but I find that doubtful.

I use the Macromedia Studio MX products (Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks) and Photoshop mostly. I will have to get Virtual PC to run Web Position on it. Other than that, I don't have any programs that are important to me at the moment.

Any advice about possible restrictions in capabilities?

The main reasons I want to switch are:
1. I want to start playing with Final Cut Pro
2. I am tired of the whole Windows platform in terms of instability, computer crashes. All my friends with Macs swear their systems are 100 times more stable and work beautifully for anything they want to accomplish.

Any advice would be be very much appreciated before I make this investment!

Thanks very much,
Laura

[sonjay]

Finally Macs are way overpriced

DerekH is right, there have been studies showing that the TCO (total cost of ownership) is generally lower over the life of the Mac.

But besides that, depending on what kind of PC you need/want, and if you would end up buying all the extras that come standard on a Mac, the initial purchase price of the PC can actually end up costing as much as or more than the Mac. When my father-in-law switched, he had some hardware problem with his Mac (that turned out not to even be a problem, just something he didn't understand), and he grumbled something about "could have gotten that $800 Dell." I priced out the Dell to bring it up to parity with his 20" flat-screen iMac (add 20" flat panel monitor, add Firewire ports, add combo CD/DVD writer, etc.), and the Dell priced out at within a few dollars of what he paid for the Mac.

That myth really should be retired and put out to pasture. Sure, it was true for a long time, but not anymore.

[whoisgregg]

Another advantage of PC's is the vast amount of shareware available for them. I can find a program (often open source)

Now that the Mac has unix underpinnings and a pretty solid X11 environment, the amount of open source and shareware available has greatly increased. (As a general rule, anything *nix can run on a mac.) Can't beat having the unix developer community available to you. :)

[macdave]

You'll probably find yourself writing more standards-compliant HTML and CSS if you're developing on the Mac. With the exception of IE5, the current crop of Mac browsers are very good at properly rendering compliant code.

(The downside is that when you check out your design in IE on a Windows machine, it's bound to be horribly disfigured and require all the usual IE-specific hacks to get it working right. But I find it's easier to add IE hacks to standards-based CSS than it is to retrofit IE-specific code to work cross-browser.)

[coolmacguy]

With the exception of IE5, the current crop of Mac browsers are very good at properly rendering compliant code.

Mac IE 5 is much better than Win IE 5 though.

[lak12]

Dude!
It's an investment for life! It looks expensive and on the end you will save tons of money by not buying and upgrading software every now and then and on time spent rebooting your machine every time it crashes or when new software installed!
Welcome to the Apple World!
Mark.