I need a mac

Downside to iMac is really no expandibility. You will have to buy leopard for $129 seperatly. It is limited to one internal hdd, but you can buy externals

 

I have a 24" with a few external HDs attached, I have 3 gigs of Ram and I have no problems when I run parallels with Vista Ultimate.

 

Drawbacks to the iMac:
1 - Fixed Height
2 - Limited Expandability (basically Memory, maybe processor, HD, and optical drive.)
3 - No official support of extending the desktop to a second screen.

To upgrade the OS you must purchase the new version of the OS. Software Update is only for the versions after the second decimal point. Although Leopard is 10.5 think of it as an entirely new version (i.e. Windows XP vs Vista.)

Any new Mac should easily support Leopard as is. However, more memory is always a good idea for the best experience.

You may hook up to 127 devices to the FireWire bus and many more on the USB bus. These devices may include Hard Drives, Optical Drives, input devices, speakers, or Printers.

TEG

 

Not sure what you mean by that, iMacs support extending the desktop to a second screen just fine.

 

It's kinda outdated. If you can wait, then wait for the updates before buying.

 

One major problem is that after you get your first mac you'll find that Steve's Reality Distortion Field gets more powerful and you'll buy anything he talks about on stage ever. I swear to god, that man must work for the credit card companies.

 

I was under the impression that iMacs only supported mirroring the desktop, not extending the desktop.

TEG

 

Funniest post I've read in a long time!

 

The iMac is a great computer, you can use bootcamp with it and play all the games you want, you can do video editing and you can use OS X. The only thing i dont like about the iMac is its limited usb and firewire inputs, if your like me and have tons of things to connect you might want to invest into a hub.

 

No, they support both mirroring and extending the desktop

 

whats the point of having a 5.1 speaker system if it's set up like a 2.1 system?

</offtopic>

 

LOL is that really any of your business, I mean really...

 

NO

 

In order:

- A downside would be being stuck with the display form factor without being able to change the internals as much as on a PC. You can upgrade processor, HD, memory, and likely slot-load drive but you won't be able to change the logic board/motherboard and most likely the video card. You couldn't change the display except to repair the screen.

Not being able to change motherboard for a different one is true for all Macs, regardless of which one you pick.

-When Leopard comes out, you will have to pay the $129. Much more worth it than say, moving from XP to Vista. Possibly less if you find one at discount.

- You are limited to one internal hard drive. You can up the capacity of the internal to a pretty large size. You can get externals if you need more, and you can daisy-chain enough to keep you happy. Or you can buy external RAID, NAS, etc., and get more storage space that way.