Changing my setup, advice needed

[cy88]

Hi all,

I am thinking of changing my setup a little, and I just want to hear some of your input.

I am currently running a 24" iMac (2.4Ghz/2GB ram/320GB/wireless kb&m), it was purchased in Nov 2007, along with my black macbook (Core Duo 2.0Ghz/2GB Ram/120GB). I just picked up a windows box last night for a very good price - AMD Phenom Quad core 2.3Ghz, 8GB Ram, 250GB, ATi X1550, Creative X-Fi xtremeMusic.

What I am thinking is, sell my iMac, and get a (or two) 24" Monitor to use as a primary desktop, then replace my macbook with macbook Air (1.6/80GB). Do you think it's a good move?

One reason is that I do use a few windows app at times, and in terms of playing media files, I do like the way Windows handles it better. Along with that, I also do a few conversion of videos from RMVB to AVI to be burned on DVD for my father (he's an older guy that prefer to watch things on TV) and there's no avaliable software to do in OSX. Therefore I find myself doing bootcamp/parallel quite a few times lately. At the same time, I love the iMac to death for it's look, quiet/cool operation (I have a small room), ability to sync between my home and portable via .mac.

Consider if the two option will run at equal cost, with not too much difference - What would you do?

Thanks for all advice,
Chris

 

[doubleohseven]

Since you already brought a Windows tower, I would recommend selling your iMac for the one or two 24" monitors you want to get for it.

What are your main uses for the MacBook Air if you buy it? Do you plan on taking it around a lot with you? Are you going to use it for work? If you don't mind a thicker laptop, I recommend buying a high-end MacBook (or even a MacBook Pro). It has much better performance and power for nearly the same price as a MacBook Air, with money to spare if you go ahead and buy the high-end MacBook.

 

[cy88]

Since you already brought a Windows tower, I would recommend selling your iMac for the one or two 24" monitors you want to get for it.

What are your main uses for the MacBook Air if you buy it? Do you plan on taking it around a lot with you? Are you going to use it for work? If you don't mind a thicker laptop, I recommend buying a high-end MacBook (or even a MacBook Pro). It has much better performance and power for nearly the same price as a MacBook Air, with money to spare if you go ahead and buy the high-end MacBook.

I can just keep the windows box as the media center in the living room, so it's not necessary for me to choose one or the other.

My main usage of the laptop (whether it's macbook or will be mba), it's just to carry around when I need a laptop (and around the house) at school. I mainly browse the net, use iWeb, iDisk, word processing sometimes.