windows 8 looks terrible. i will be keeping my win 7 for along time. it works great for me.

 

I'll probably stick to 7 for a while aswell. Gregg $3500 for a mac, no offence but you're out of your mind. What would you use it for?

 

I will use it for keeping my music collection, surfing the net, and after the election I will need to set up a website for my presidential campaign. I have no idea yet how to do that but I have a message that I need to get out to the voters. I will have only three years to get it done and hopefully collect enough money to get elected. I have already resigned myself to believing that with the current group of presidential nominees that the next for years are going to be the same as the last four. After I begin I can't afford to have my computer down due to some snafu or virus.

 

I can promise that in a few years that Mac will be just as obsolete as any PC. I've been working with PCs for over almost 19 years (since I was 6 or so) and I've only had ONE crash and I've never had a virus. EVER. My 7 year old Toshiba laptop is still running strong. The only thing is that most newer programs don't run so well on 512mb of Ram. Been meaning to upgrade it to a GB of RAM but just haven't gotten around to it. It's my storm chasing computer for my "mobile command post" aka my truck. The macs made in the same period are in the same boat though, and most of them you cannot upgrade the internals. That one crash I had was related to faulty hardware. And trust me, if you expose your apple to enough, you WILL eventually get a virus. I know people that have.

Trust me when I say that you're paying for the exact same processor, hard drive, CD drive, etc that you'd be paying for with a PC. The hardware anymore is EXACTLY the same. Apple started using intel processors a few years ago. So apparently their equipment wasn't keeping up with the times. You're paying 3 grand more than I could build a similar spec'd machine for and the only difference is the operating system and the way it looks on the outside. Is an operating system alone really worth 3 grand? Especially considering you cannot upgrade the internal equipment in the future to react to future computing needs?

This, in a nutshell, is why I will never own a Mac unless it's given to me. Apple OS's are very much "One Size Fits All", they don't allow a terrible amount of customization, you can't upgrade them for future needs, and you're paying a huge chunk of money more for the exact same hardware.