Just don't know which one I should get... if I cannot decide, should I stay with a Windows machine?
The 27" iMac is an awesome Windows machine. So even if you don't want to use OS X, buying an iMac would be a great choice.
And let's face it: Windows 7 is the best operating system that Microsoft has released since Windows NT 4. Unlike everything that the stupid Mac commercials want to make you believe, Windows 7 is rock solid, fast, SECURE, compatible with industry standards and any corporate network of your choice and it is also very user friendly.
Technologically, the NT-based family of Microsoft Windows has always been technologically superior to anything that Apple has ever sold. For example, NT already had pre-emptive multitasking and full 32-Bit technology more than half a decade before Mac OS X saw the light of day. NT also already had a real networking stack when Apple still thought that AppleTalk was good enough.
Apple has the superior graphics(!) design and some good ideas in the usability department that make OS X slightly more comfortable to use - QuickLook, for example.
But Time Machine is a great example for a minimalistic feature with a bombastic graphical user interface. Back in 1993, when NT 3.1 was released, NTBackup was already more powerful than Time Machine is today and NTBackup even had support for real backup devices - not just external hard disks. In comparison, Time Machine just looks awesome, but the beauty only is skin deep -- as it is with most of Apple's "cool" features.
Apple also has a lot of counter-productive ideas in their products. One menu bar for all running applications, for example. Especially when you use two large screens this is going to be VERY annoying and it will also slow you down significantly. The dock also is not even remotely as useful as Microsoft's start menu and task bar.
Also, what most people here will not be honest about, OS X is a much more costly platform than Windows on the long run. You need to defrag your hard disk because the Boot Camp assistant will abort with a "cannot move files" error message? Guess what: You'll have to BUY a third party disk defrag utility for that because OS X does not have one on board! You want to zip files? There comes your next shareware expense, because 7zip for OS X isn't really there yet and you'll be more or less forced to buy something like StuffIt. Free hard disk cloning tools? Forget it. Buy SuperDuper. That list goes on. It's a bit better today than it was a couple of years ago, but for most of the freeware that you would find for Windows, there is only Shareware available for Mac OS X.
Now people will try to tell you that for Windows you would need a virus-scanner subscription. Which isn't true. You -should- have an anti-virus software on your system (and even if it is a Mac!), but Microsoft gives away their Security Essentials for free and there are also several other FREE anti-virus software packages. Mac users usually brag about the great PDF support in OS X. Big deal. How many free PDF creators do you want for Windows that even have more features than the PDF printer driver in OS X? Try CutePDF or FreePDF - the latter can even concatenate multiple PDF print jobs.
But the biggest deal probably is that you basically purchase a new Mac OS X release every 18 months or so, and Snow Leopard was the only update so far that did cost less than 129 bucks. And basically that was only because Snow Leopard was an Intel-only "Service Pack" for Leopard that didn't even really bring any new features. We actually paid 29 bucks for having the PowerPC support removed from our systems - and to have Photoshop and other expensive "Pro" software crash more often than before. That only became acceptable after the first point release of Snow Leopard.
Now in Windows land, you could safely live until 2014 with the operating system that you already bought back in the year 2001 -- that's how long Microsoft is going to support Windows XP. They getting support for Mac OS X Cheetah or Puma from Apple, which are about the same age. Or try getting support for Tiger from Apple, which is just as old as Vista.
Apple is also very quick at dropping software support for what they call obsolete hardware. And obsolete hardware in Apple land is usually everything that's older than a year or two. Yes, a Mac might live for ten or more years. But that doesn't mean that you will be able to upgrade the software on it beyond a certain point. Or that the new software will even be remotely usable. Try running Leopard on a 1 GHz 17" iMac G4 with 1 GB RAM, for example. That's a machine that surpasses Leopard's system requirements by quite a margin -- and Leopard CRAWLS on that machine. It's painful, even if it's a clean installation on a freshly formatted hard disk. If you don't believe it, give me a visit and I'll show you.
Tiger was the last OS that worked rather well on that iMac, but even Tiger hat its own caveats: The iSub subwoofer, for example, no longer worked properly on Tiger because it was an "obsolete" product. Now isn't that nice? Apple just removed the necessary hardware driver from that OS. Why? The only explanation can be that they wanted to force their customers to buy new hardware. Or why else do you remove already developed drivers from your operating system? It' not like it would cost them anything to keep them on the DVD. And Apple's portfolio of supported hardware really isn't that big.
In PC land, you'll get road maps and EARLY press releases about future developments that are supposed to help you plan your investment in the platform. In Apple land, you'll never know anything until Zeus (Steve Jobs) himself throws some lightning from Mount Olympos (Cupertino).
You have to answer yourself if those beautifully packaged Apple products and their shiny little logo are worth it for you. You can get more bang for your buck elsewhere, you just don't get that "cool" and "hip" image.
