switch to mac

No longer needing something heavy-duty, I’ll be switching to a Mac this fall when I get a new computer for school. Prices have come down to something a little more reasonable, and I was duly impressed by the iMac my old university just purchased. Very exciting; I am in the research phases now to decide how much room I’m going to need for storage and that kind of thing.

I’ve had some feedback as to why I should get a Mac, and none of it truly bowls me over. I’ve used them quite a bit for newspaper layout (Quark XPress) and some photography work. So it’s not that they aren’t fabulous and beautiful and all that. But I’m a rough-and-tumble kind of girl, and I’m not sure the Mac can hack it (pun intended). Right now, I’m just not feeling it. Give it another couple of years and I’ll see how I feel then.

I hate to be lone voice of dissent in a sea of cheers for Apple, but their computers are freaking expensive. And I’d also like to hear the chorus of ‘Macs never have problems!’ tone down a few decibels; I’ve been in several Mac stores (gorgeous testaments to overpaid industrial designers and architects) and I see people at the Genius Bar looking as perplexed as any PC user.

I’m not saying they aren’t gorgeous and user-friendly. My Dell 700m is a year-and-a-half old, and it’s having all kinds of issues: the USB ports are going batty, the ‘n’ key is sticking, the right speaker stopped working last week, etc. The issues I am having, I believe, are mostly related to the hardware and my abuse of it.

The MacBook I am considering prices out $1574 the way I want it built (and that’s with the education discount); the equivalent Dell is $994. Same approximate processor speed (2 GHz), same memory (2 GB), massive hard drive discrepancies (I’d rather the 100GB at 7200 from Dell than the 160 GB at 5400 that Apple is offering), and similar screen sizes (the Mac is a little smaller).

It would seem that Mac buyers have lots of disposable cash (so maybe it’s actually a status symbol), lots and lots and lots of photos, video and music, excellent vision (mine’s 20/20 and I worry about going down in screen size), and offices that are tastefully decorated and sparkling clean. I have a slobbery Labrador, and I plan to continue throwing this laptop in my Jeep (it gets wet sometimes) and using it about 10+ hours a day.

Add to this dilemma is that I’ll have to plunk down $170 for a new copy of QuickBooks as my PC version will obviously not run on a Mac. And I’ve been using Microsoft’s Streets & Trips for my business for several years; is there any equivalent for Mac?

I would love a Mac. I almost dropped to my knees at the entry of their flagship store in San Francisco last year. The people in Apple stores seem to be very helpful, but their telephone support hasn’t been so great when it’s come to my three iPods. If someone can convincingly argue for spending the additional $774, I will do it.