After 25 years with Dell,Gateway/HP, I am very seriously considering the switch over to an Apple desktop. Any input would greatly be appreciated:
(1) Work Use: Microsoft Office Applications with a heavy emphasis on Outlook/Powerpoint presentations/Word/Project. Please note that I do presentations at conferences so my Powerpoint slides must be 100% compatibile with whatever the conference is running.
(2) Personal Use
-- I am unusual in that I do 95% tv watching at my computer through the use of a tv tuner (dual tuner on 1 card) hooked up to my cable provider. I automatically cut all commercials before watching any programming and anything I want to archive is either stored on my hard drive or burned to a dvd with the usual authoring software. Basically TIVO on steroids.
-- I am a part time day trader and I currently have 2 monitors hooked up. I am thinking of going to 4 monitors in the future.
-- when I am not busy, I play music on my Yahama synthesizer and created songs/compose music on my computer so software notation and semi-professional music studio hookup is important to me
-- basic web browsing, word processing, financial calculations, music playing (mp3 only, no i-tunes), video watching/editing/music composition
-- home network is important since I have a HP tablet that I use as well as a secondary system in the bedroom
-- No games (no time).
(3) Current Dell Config: Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM and 2TB (and growing) hard drive space (combination of internal/external hard drives). Current system is sometimes strained and is crashing more than I would like (hence the reason for the possible switch to a Mac--getting too old to play around with the fussiness of Windows. I want something that just works with minimal hassles).
Help: What MAC do I need and any spec recommendations (as well as software suggestions) would be appreciated? I'm patient so I am willing to wait to the new stuff comes out if necessary.
Thanks to all in advance!!
CheddarMan
(1) Work Use: Microsoft Office Applications with a heavy emphasis on Outlook/Powerpoint presentations/Word/Project. Please note that I do presentations at conferences so my Powerpoint slides must be 100% compatibile with whatever the conference is running.
(2) Personal Use
-- I am unusual in that I do 95% tv watching at my computer through the use of a tv tuner (dual tuner on 1 card) hooked up to my cable provider. I automatically cut all commercials before watching any programming and anything I want to archive is either stored on my hard drive or burned to a dvd with the usual authoring software. Basically TIVO on steroids.
-- I am a part time day trader and I currently have 2 monitors hooked up. I am thinking of going to 4 monitors in the future.
-- when I am not busy, I play music on my Yahama synthesizer and created songs/compose music on my computer so software notation and semi-professional music studio hookup is important to me
-- basic web browsing, word processing, financial calculations, music playing (mp3 only, no i-tunes), video watching/editing/music composition
-- home network is important since I have a HP tablet that I use as well as a secondary system in the bedroom
-- No games (no time).
(3) Current Dell Config: Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM and 2TB (and growing) hard drive space (combination of internal/external hard drives). Current system is sometimes strained and is crashing more than I would like (hence the reason for the possible switch to a Mac--getting too old to play around with the fussiness of Windows. I want something that just works with minimal hassles).
Help: What MAC do I need and any spec recommendations (as well as software suggestions) would be appreciated? I'm patient so I am willing to wait to the new stuff comes out if necessary.
Thanks to all in advance!!
CheddarMan