Recently, I had the opportunity to mess around with my cousin's Macintosh. I own a PC already, but I was impressed with the Mac when I used it. Where can I go to find out more about Macs, ie., pros and cons, etc..
I'm considering either buying a Mac, or building my own PC. Is it possible to buy the components to build a Mac? (is it even cost effective if it's possible?)
How upgradable is a Mac system? Any info that anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance!

My suggestion: Go on Ebay or somewhere else and buy an older mac so you can mess around some more and get a feel for it. Depending on how much you want to spend try looking for an 8500/120 or better. The lowest model I would go would be a 6100, as it's at the very least a "Power PC" with a risc processor (it's the first one actually). These machines won't compete with a new G4 or some hot 500mhz PC system, but they are still good machines which will get you involved with the Mac O/S, software, and file management schemes. Then go from there. Othet than that just keep asking friends to teach you on thier macs.

Or you could throw your money out the window driving down the freeway.....The Mac is a dieing platform.......buy a copy of windows 2000....much better money spent. All your current Windows software will run. Youll save money in the long run.

Thanks for the input, I am currently running a Windows PC. I would never have gotten to know as much about PC's as I do if I hadn't had to constantly repair, upgrade, recover, rebuild, and troubleshoot the hardware, and OS. It seems to be a constant with most PCs.
I don't know if the Mac is a dying OS, but there seems to be enough people out there running Mac to keep it in business. The only drawback to the Mac is that it seems to cost quite a bit to get into a descent one... Where I can build a Windows PC or get into a somewhat descent one for under $500.00
I was impressed with my cousin's Mac because it booted up instantly (4-5) seconds. It also didn't run a lot of (behind your back) programs. It didn't seem to have as many vulnerabilities as a windows machine, and didn't crash as much.
I don't know for sure if I will get a Mac... It sure is tempting. Perhaps if I can get my hands on one for little money, I'll get one.
Or I can always wait for Linux to become more "User friendly". Heh.

I would switch to a Mac if I thought it was an improvement. The Mac crowd has been telling the world how superior there OS is to Windows........well if it was so good why did they dump it for OSX.....I havent heard anyone say System xx is good enough. You apparently havent tried or had experience with Windows 2000. Its very stable and fast and will run nearly all your current apps. It is lacking in the game arena but will play many Windows 9x games. By the time they smooth out the rough edges of OS X.....Apple will ge going out of business or will be even further behind than they are now. Think about where computing is going. The linux crowd keeps saying switch to there platform. I have heard few people say switch to OSX as a alternative to Linux and Windows. If you dont have a large investment in software and training with Windows....your not out much. But if all the software and games you boughten are Windows are you ready to toss them out........
Here is a review of OSX....by an unbiaed user.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q2/macos-x-final/macos-x-1.html

Mac platforms are good in some ways but all in all, the Windows platform can be built and bashed around, no expensive replacements or strange web sites in Indonesia to get new parts from.

A mac is good for DTP and such for print, granted, but a top PC is 20 times the speed of any mac and the web was designed for the PC - bare that in mind.

I'm also new to the Mac world and agree that Mac is much easier to work with. I've worked on a help desk for several years and can relate to the anti-windows attitude. If in fact Win2000-which I'm running on my PC at work on a 2000 network-is as good as everyone is saying, it is about time. Male pattern badlness isn't hereditary, it comes from the overriding desire to pull your hair out using Windows in a multi-platform environment or trying to do an upgrade.

I have used both PC and Mac in work environments. PC's first and then Mac's. During the transition I called the Mac an overpriced paperweight. I now laugh at that, after a little learning curve I found myself confident with both.

I personally will only buy a mac. For me it like driving a BMW not a Tercel. Yeh, the Tercel is cheap, parts are everywhere and there a tons of them, but wouldn't you like to drive the BMW?

Something else to think about - A local company has 325 PC's and 210 Macs to administer. The IT dept. has 35 employees. 33 for PC's and 2 for macs. This increases the cost of a PC alot when you figure support into the mix.

As for speed, We are all getting snowed by numbers. Both platforms run very differently. I have an iMac 266 that crushes PC (AMD I think) 500 in most things. Look into benchmark tests for the things YOU want to do. It's like the days of the Mussle Car, Do you need to go 90 mph to get milk at the corner. No.

I have worked with or owned about 20 Macs only one of those had a piece of hardware go bad (easy, power supply on a 6 year ond computer). Of the 4 PC's that I have been around. I have seen: 2 bad CD drives 1 bad motherboard 1 bad floppy drive, 1 bad hard drive and one computer so screwd up that the company had to take it back. None of these computers were older than 2 years.

Yes, I am a Mac head. But I can still see that they both have strenghts and weeknesses. And all in all Your ability to to choose is very important. It keeps all parties competitive, new products for us.

As for the Web. Most of it is not Mac or PC it is UNIX (Check out OS X).

There are 25 million Mac users. And that number is growing not shrinking.

Anyway, I hope this helped. Take your time, shop around and most importantly, try both of them.

It seems to me that a lot of PC people keep posting here and on other posts in the mac forum. If they really BELIEVED that the mac was a second rate platform they wouldn't waste two seconds of thier time even CONSIDERING trolling through posts in the •••MAC••• forum now would they? We mac users really don't bother with the PC forums now do we? They are, as is said,...OFF TOPIC to us and we don't waste our time, or the time of the legitimate PC users that are there for a purpose.
So why don't you staunch PC guys (and I don't include the open minded dual-platform guys) do something more productive like surf for porn?

Thank-you all for your input, both Mac and PC users, I have an open mind about both platforms, and I think I can see the pros and cons of both.... And I can see where Linux is becomming more and more user friendly as well, I guess variety is the spice of life.... You know what I think I might do, is since I work with sheet metal a lot, I may just build a case to house both a Mac and PC motherboards and Hard drives, etc.,.. he he he... I'll call it FrankenMac!
Anyhoo,
Thx for the input!

BMW vs Tercel, nice analogy. It is true mac is not for hardcore gamers, and guys only willing to spend =>$500 for a burrito. If you spends some bucks you will be impressed what Mac can be. I still like my original Imac(233), cost a load to get this baby home at the time it was released. But you will enjoy your Mac if you gonna to own one.
-----------------------------------------
::feedback from a Imac user::

We PC guys are just trying to save the poor chap some money. Instead of spending 2000 on a Mac just buy a chunk of gold. They both work as good paper weights......but the gold is still worth 2000 dollars a year later.

Well you dont go to the PC forums because you'd be laughed off of them. Apple is evil and their employees are perverts.

For the people that don't know about computers
should keep their mouth shut. Mac or PC??? This
is the question? If you want to play games, lots a
games, from all the brands, go for PC. if you want
a machine that It is stable and good go for MAC.
Why? Mac emulate PC. PC don't emulate MAC.
Old games for windows 95 or 98 runs in Virtual PC
with no problem. Crash problems in computers I
find out that crash occur of lack of knolwegde and
upgrades. People that don't upgrade their
Machines (PC or MAC) always will have problems.
Go and start whit a low end computer. iMac start at
$799.00 New. PC start for free. If you know what
mean.

Good Luck

Well, I already have a PC, and it's okay for gaming, surfing the net and general messing around. I think when I get a new one, I will build my own as opposed to getting a prebuilt system. AND, I think I may just get a MAC as well, just because I'm curious about other systems and OS's. I have Linux Mandrake 7.2 and BeOS already. (The BeOS won't run in my current system)
Some of the negative comments towards Mac seem to be out of vendictiveness rather than actual experience with the OS or system... AS I had stated before, I was messing around with my cousin's G4 with an OS 9.x, and I was genuinely impressed with it. My cousin also has a PC as well, and he seems to enjoy the Mac a little more. I was impressed with the Multimedia capabilities, and how customizable the OS is... As far as how fast it is, I know that it runs circles around my PC (which isn't saying much, because it's only a 533Mhz AMD running win98 and 2000 and I know that a K6-2 isn't nearly as fast as a pentium2 or 3)However, I believe his is only a 450Mhz Mac, and it was amazingly noticeable in how much faster it is. I could actually compare it (speedwise) to the 900+Mhz Pentium & Athlon systems that I run at work. ( I think it is even a little faster than those systems!) There's probably quite a few things that I like better about PC, but none the less, I was very impressed with the Mac. I think I will probably start out with a PowerMac that is at least upgradeable to a G4. (probably will get one from EBAY) Something cheap just to dink with at first... See if it's worth a larger investment & what-not...
Thanks for the Input though folks!

Just an additional note:

If you like your old mac (tinkering), consider one of the newer G4 machines in the future. They are extremely well designed (hardware) and with the advent of OS X they are very very stable. Granted, OS X native software is not abundant yet, but the list grows as each day passes.

I am have a PC (for work) running W2K (which, btw, is not a bad OS for Microsoft - probably the best they've put out to date) and a G4 running OS X which runs my website. This is my 3rd Mac but I don't think I'll have to buy another one since the hardware is so upgradeable. For example, the CPU is simply another card that you plug into a slot. I am considering buying a dual cpu card in the near future (hoping the $$ will drop a little this summer). I'd just unplug the old one and plug in the new and viola! I have myself a dual processor mac which OS X can take complete advantage of...

Mike

This is just a minor note. If you do want a
Mac to monkey around with first, just to
get yourself more familiar with both Mac
hardware, software, and the OS itself, try
these places...www.sunrem.com,
www.powermax.com, and www.icni.com.
The most basic Power Mac is at least
under $200, and something like a 5400 is
like under 500. Would use a 5400 though,
people have started making upgrade
cards for it, and it's a nice, all-in-one
system.

>and the web was designed for the PC

You have got to be joking !! ever heard
that over 70% of the web is designed on
Macs .....