Differences & Why

[miniConvert]

Dreamweaver isn't Universal Binary yet is it? In which case running it under Rosetta would be pretty horrible? Better to get a PowerMac G5 system in that case and not an Intel one.

To the OP - Mac is a different way of doing things. Trying to hunt down likenesses to your current setup probably isn't the way to do things. If you're happy with Windows and your current setup then stick with it, but if the Windows world of viruses, spyware and instability is getting you down then the time to switch may well have arrived.

As other posters have suggested, I think you need to get to somewhere that sells Apple Mac's so you can have a good play and come to your own conclusions.

 

[dpaanlka]

IMac 17" Intel Core Duo has been recommended as an equal to my machine. Except for the Dual Core processor, most other specs are similar to my pc. However, i dont understand what the differences are or why they are different. I have tried looking up IMac Core Duo site, but dont understand it. Can any1 help?

iMac, not IMac! Silly!

 

[Eraserhead]

I will answer first why I bought a Mac in the first place. This was because to get a PC, i was happy with was going to cost £300 more than my iMac, this was because i wanted Firewire/Bluetooth/Wireless which the Mac included, even so at the time I was torn between the two systems. I also preferred Tiger to XP (as my Dad has an iMac too), and felt I would want to upgrade my computer to Vista when it came out, after looking around online i found it would probably require about a 2Ghz processor to run, with AV/Anti Spy on top of that i felt i needed a better processor for the PC, to compare OS X 10.4 run's apparently OK (with enough RAM) on a 300Mhz-400Mhz PowerMac (released in early 1999!) so i'd have a lot of life in a Mac.

After owning it for a bit I felt that not having to do disk-defrag/virus/anti spyware scans was a huge timesaver. When i had to reinstall OS X i liked the fact that I didn't need to reinstall my app's.

Then I got into iSync to organise my lectures so, if i'm not there i at least know about them 15 minutes before, that's a one button sync and the data's on my Phone.

Later on I did a Java course and used XCode for that, which was a better experience than for the PC users, i could access the UNIX machines remotely from my Mac which the work was done on extremely easily, and didn't require extra software.

There is also a lot of cool free software for the Mac, which I have really enjoyed using, and the community is a lot better too! There probably more than for Windows, though the commericial free software (eg Skype, MSN, RealPlayer etc.) is generally better for Windows,

The iLife suite is really cool, i have only dabbled in it myself but iPhoto is great, the slideshows are cool too, these have been great fun at Uni.

I'm currently waiting for the Macbook, which I will get over the summer, no-way am I going back to Window's.

I would recommend adding extra RAM for a new Mac, as you're a professional i'd probably recommend getting 2GB RAM, don't get it from Apple get it third-party if you want to save some money. (make sure you keep the original RAM in case your computer goes wrong).