Col Colt said:
I've been looking at the imac G5 for a few weeks now and was wondering if anyone has one of these and what you think of it. With the advent of the Intel chip, would it be a good investment now? Always having just a PC, can one download Windows programs to a mac or is this our of the question? I do know that Norton makes anti virus/firewall software specifically for the mac. Would a router be a good idea as I've always used on on my Dell. As you can gather, I've never owned a mac...yet.
I bought a 20" G5 iMac in January, and it's worked perfectly ever since. I added an extra 512Mb RAM to the (then) stock 256Mb, and it happily copes with anything my family throws at it (no games though). The Intel chip is a red herring, as the iMac will be upgraded to a new cpu chip at some point anyway - who cares if it's Intel or a G6. The iMac you buy today will still be doing what you want in a few years time anyway - ALL systems will be obsoleted by the next generation within a year or so.
Windows programs will not work on a Mac, unless you run them in an emulator, such as VPC. I switched to a Mac a year ago, and haven't turned on my Sony Vaio laptop for about 4 months, so it may be that you can get everything you need running on your Mac.
A router is a good idea for any system. There are no known problems with viruses, trogans or spyware on the Mac, so you can liberate yourself from the regular scanning and cleaning you have to do with Windows. Having said that, some people like to run an anti-virus utility so that they don't accidentaly pass on a virus received in an email or a document (which has no effect on the Mac) to a Windows user. I personally have not used an anti-virus utility or spyware scanner since I got my Mac.
As a long term Windows user (since Windows 2.0) I have totally switched to Mac/OS X now. It's hard to describe the experience of using a Mac until you've spent some time with one, but for me it's smooth, stylish, cool, liberating, and it just plain works. Run, don't walk, to the Apple store and you'll never look back.
All the best, and keep us posted. The fine people on this forum always bid a warm welcome to a new Mac owner.