At long last-- the switch has been made!

[dXTC]

Well, folks, I finally did it.

After first signing on here with the intent of getting a Mac as my next computer in my signature, I fulfilled it. I am typing what you are now reading on my new 20" 2.0GHz Aluminum iMac, thanks to the Apple Store at Oxmoor in Louisville. Whodathunkit-- a store with no "cash registers"-- it was all done wirelessly, and my receipt was e-mailed to me!

One of my very first posts in this forum was about how elegant my Gen 2 nano was, and pondered whether other products were designed likewise. I now see firsthand that this is indeed so. There was very little configuration needed to get everything set up and online... well, beyond using the Leopard drop-in to do a clean Leopard install, and that was a snap too.

I picked up a Belkin 4-port hub to help handle my MIDI interfaces (I'm a hobbyist musician), and a mini DVI - to - DVI adapter so I can use the flat-panel monitor from my old PeeCee as a secondary monitor.

Now, a question from a new switcher: I also got a WD MyBook Pro 250Gb external drive that I'm going to use for Time Machine. I'm also wanting to use it as a secondary drive for Windows XP in Bootcamp. (The primary Bootcamp partition will be on the internal drive, for speed purposes-- I'm going to be using Cakewalk SONAR Producer in XP.)
The Question: Should I create a separate partition for each, or let Time Machine and Bootcamp share one big partition?

 

[Fletchzky]

Congrats! I'll be joining you on a 24" iMac in January

 

[ScottFitz]

I can't answer your partition question, but I can suggest that with the price of external drives being so stupid low, maybe buy one just for winXP?

I, as well, bought a 2nd gen 8gb nano when they first hit and did the same thing... thought dayum, if they make this ipod so freaking slick, what about their computers. I've had my white imac 17" for about a year now. Never regretted it. Now I've got an ipod touch coming. Can't get enough.

I'm trying to rationalize getting anohter imac, just not sure where to use it.

I'm probably going to wait to see what slick new stuff comes out in January at macrowld.

 

[ivan1234]

congrats!

 

[swiftaw]

You'll need 2 separate partitions on the external.

 

[dXTC]

You'll need 2 separate partitions on the external.

I thought so; I kinda figured that Time Machine would behave best on its own partition. Thanks.
A related question: Should I keep the FAT32 format when I repartition, so that both OS X and XP can use the second partition as a shared filesystem?

ScottFitz: I've been trying to rationalize getting a Mac for nearly a year now, so I know what you're going through. As far as waiting until January: All the hints and opinions elsewhere on the forum say that right now is the proper confluence of hardware and software updates for buying an iMac, and there probably won't be any major updates in the iMac lineup for quite a while. (Well, maybe a GPU update, but for me that's minor; I'm not much of a gamer.)

Oh, and ivan1234 and Fletchzky: thanks for the congrats.