Mac versu PC,{snicker,snicker}

[Ron99]

Also, if you are interested in photo editing go Mac. iPhoto is pretty good out off the box unless you want to do really advanced digital editing. Then the cost of software is the same whether you are on the Mac or PC.

[Doug]

Love the discussion guys. Thanks.

I did happen to see the photo shop with the bamboo pad I looked at yesterday. Was adding it into the equation. That again adds another $100 to the cost of the PC though. I think with the nice touch pad on the Mac,s I would be fine as is. Agreed its no bamboo pad though.

If the Toshiba could get away without additional warranty it be $899 with a pad and/or $999 with the crap cleaned out, unless I could do it myself. Once I get over that $1000 mark I head back to the Macs.

Of course the Toshiba has 4g ram and 500gb hard drive compared with the 2g and smaller hard drive on the Mac. Then again I need the 4g just to be able to run my F-Secure on the PC.

As for adding ram on a Mac, Future Shop charges just over $200 for 2 more on the Mac Book. The iMac, which is already a couple hundred more, has 4g already plus a 500gb hard drive.

[Slick Fork]

If the costs come close, get the one you like. Simple as that!

I didn't realize you could get away with buying regular PC components for upgrades. I always thought apple forced proprietary hardware on people. That's good to know and a point in apples favour.

I will disagree with you Ron though, on the headaches with the OS. The people that have problems are typically the ones that don't know to use an anti-virus program or just plain old common sense. Or, they're the ones that try to put the latest OS on last decades hardware. I've run Win95,98se,XP,Vista and now 7 and have never had problems that weren't of my own creation.

Apples security "edge" is because it's typically not worth the time for hackers to write viruses for when there are 100x as many PC's to target as there are Mac's. Not because it's a more secure OS. The comparison I would use is a nice mercedes sitting beside an old beater. The mercedes is 10x as likely to have the window smashed and the glovebox looted through, while you could leave the doors unlocked on the beater and no-one would touch it... doesn't make the beater more secure.

Back to Doug:

If you are photo editing, after the processor the 2 things that are CRITICAL are hard drive space and RAM. The average size of even my JPEG's is about 10mb each (saving in highest quality) and my raw files are about 15mb.

4GB's of RAM on a win7 equipped PC is lots, that's what I have on my desktop. More is better but 4 is just fine.

A 500 gig hard drive should do you for a while! I've got 750 and sometimes think about just putting stuff on there so it doesn't look so empty

[fishoholic]

Originally Posted by Doug

I went back and looked at the Pro again. Its still there.

Why is it still there, you need to buy it already! You seem to want to go that route but you keep hesitating due to cost. I say screw the cost and go for it, I guarantee you wont regret buying a Mac