After a year of soul searching, researching, and drooling I have finally made the switch and used our tax rebate to purchase an iMac. This move is still a little shocking to me because a year ago I was waiting for Vista to be released so I could buy a new PC. When I started seeing the terrible reviews of Vista I also noticed the feature list for the upcoming release of Leopard from Apple. There were many neat things, but what caught my eye was Time Machine – a seemless file backup tool that is integrated into the operating system. After suffering through a hard drive crash the summer before this feature jumped out at me. Since that time I have been keeping tabs on all the new Apple releases until finally biting the bullet. Here are the key reasons for someone who has used Windows for 20 years to make the jump.

1. Age – Our current desktop is 6 years old and showing its age. We already had 1 hard drive die and it seems to be getting slower and louder.
2. Backups – As I mentioned above, the seamless automation of backups is big to me.
3. USB 2.0 – All our peripherals are mind numbingly slow because of the old USB 1.0 ports.
4. All that I need – Mac users try to win me over by telling me how Macs can run Windows programs if I install Parallels…but I tell them there are no Windows programs that I need to use. Here is the current extent of our computing…all things that Apple does better and simpler
   • Surf internet (Firefox)
   • Email (Thunderbird)
   • Calendar (Google)
   • Photos (Photoshop Elements)
   • iTunes
   • Blogging (Firefox and occasional HTML editing)

When I looked at what a mac offers it is an identical match to everything I want to do on a computer, but without the hassles of maintaining a PC. So this week we took the plunge and I will be posting about our experiences as we switch over, but first here is what we got.

A lot of people have switched to laptops at home, but we prefer having a desktop. I also have a PC laptop through work that I can use at home when I need to. After initially looking at the Mac Pro (and choking on the price) I looked at the iMacs. Coming from a PC background, the idea of a self contained unit that I will not be able to upgrade was unnerving. I started looking at these machines a year ago and it took me that long to get over the mental hurdle of not being able to open the case and swap out the hard drive and graphics card.

Once I decided what to get I configured everything in the Apple store and suffered a little sticker shock. I played around with different configurations and looked at refurbs. I’d picked my setup when I started checking out and noticed something I hadn’t considered…sales tax. That’s when I decided to take a look at Amazon. There I found the prices a little cheaper, no sales tax, AND a $100 rebate. The downside is that you can’t configure the iMacs, but after a little homework I decided it would be cheaper to just buy the RAM from another vendor. Here’s what I got.

• Apple 24″ iMac Desktop (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive)
• LaCie d2 Quadra 500 GB External Hard Drive
• Apple iWork ’08
• AppleCare Protection Plan for iMac – 3 Years
• 4 GB memory kit from Crucial

I installed the memory before I even powered on the iMac and it is working great. The big external drive will be my Time Machine backup drive. I decided on the extended warranty to ease my concerns of being unable to work on this machine myself like I did with all my PCs. The total from Amazon and Crucial with overnight shipping was almost $1000 cheaper than the Apple store! And I have a $100 rebate check coming.

I’ll keep posting about my Mac experiences in the coming weeks as I get all our files transferred and start using iLife and the other applications. So far I will give a big thumbs up to the hardware. The screen is absolutely gorgeous. Getting used to OS X is going to take awhile. It reminds me of when I got my first automatic transmission car after years of driving standard. I keep stepping for the clutch and wanting to shift. That being said, in only a couple hours of use I downloaded all the latest files, installed Firefox, setup 6 of our email accounts and my new .mac account, setup iChat, and clicked around exploring many different features. Macs are certainly different, but any slowness I’m feeling because of the unfamiliar operating system is made up by how much faster this computer is to my dusty old Dell.

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