I guess wavering opinions on this topic. I'm far from a pc whiz, I just know over the years I've had my share of viruses that I had to clean off, as have others I know. My sister in-law has been using her mac for almost 2 yrs and hasn't had a lick of issues, but that is the extent of my personal knowledge which is why I asked. Appreciate the info from all.
Without getting sidetracked, here's the breakdown on Macs:
They've been on Intel chips for the last 6 years. That means the guts of the computer - the CPU, the memory, the hard drives...it's all the same stuff you're going to get from Dell. But that's where the similarities end.
They have 3 desktop computers:
Mac Mini - Little bitty guy for $600. You can't find a PC this small. Plug your existing monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc in because it comes all by itself.
Mac Pro - A beast of a workstation, Xeon processors, ECC memory...You're only going to get this if you are doing 3D graphics or hardcore video stuff. They're expensive but so are workstations from Dell or HP.
iMac - The best all-in-one computer there is. 21.5" model for $1199 or you can spend more and get a 27" monster. Everyone where I work who doesn't have a laptop has one of these.
They also have 2 laptops:
Macbook Air - Thin, light, and now copycat 'Ultrabooks' from companies like Acer are hitting the stores. Starts at $999, they are the best portable machine you can get. 11" or 13" models available. If you need to take more than 128GB of data with you, you'll need to get an external hard drive or spend big money on a larger SSD. You're also limited to 4GB of RAM with the Air, but that shoudn't be a problem for 95% of the people out there. They also don't have a DVD drive.
Macbook Pro - Used to be thin and light until the Air came out. Solid aluminium, they have set the standard for laptops and PC manufacturers have just started to attempt to copy (See HP and Dell). 7-hour batteries, screen sizes of 13, 15, and 17 inches, quad-core processors, up to 16GB of RAM and dual hard drives... The glossy screen can be a turn-off for some users, so a matte option is available.
Mac OS X operating system - A tested UNIX core with an Apple user interface. If you need to work with Word/Excel documents, there's Microsoft Office 2011 or free alternative such as OpenOffice - but they aren't 100% of the Windows version. They are slower and have their own quirks.
All the common web browsers are available. Firefox, Chrome, Opera. You can even run Windows using Parallels or VirtualBox, or even boot straight to Windows using boot camp. Although, if you plan on using Windows 90% of the time, I would just get a Windows machine.
There's Mac software to do most of the stuff on Windows (Microsoft Office, Photoshop and the other Adobe apps, AutoCAD...), but since most people are doing either web-based applications or working with media such as movies/music, chance are you won't need any additional software, at least not anything you have to pay for.
Spec-for-spec, a Mac will more than likely cost a little bit more. But you can't buy the OS X operating system for a PC, and you don't get things like the amazing trackpad on the laptops (also available for desktops), instant sleep-resume that always works, or a system than turns on in 15 seconds for those times when you shut it all the way down. The resale value is much higher, so if you decide you don't like the thing, you'll be surprised at how much you can sell it for 6 months down the road, or even 2 years down the road when you decide to upgrade. Your first Mac might be $1200 but your second one will probably only be $400.
