I'm getting pretty tired of my slow celeron pc. It's a desktop with ~300 mhz processor and a fair amount of ram (at least 256). I'm thinking about switching to Mac. I'd probably get a clamshell iBook from eBay for $250-300. Supposedly that's enough to run OS X, right? Also, it's nice to have wireless networking with a notebook, but I've heard that it's hard to network a mix of PCs and Apples. Can anyone clarify? I'm really just looking for people who've used both Macs and Windows. Would you recommend I switch to Mac? I really like OS X's simplicity and ease of use. Thanks for helping.

I forgot... Another option I'm considering is putting Linux as a second OS on my desktop. Do you think this would be a better choice than Mac? I haven't found any yet, but are there any emulators for Windows that emulate OS 9 or 10? Thanks so much again.

300 MH to run XP? On a non-risc processor like a celeron (that doesn't even have a math co-processor) it would indeed be intolerably slow...a 300 mh pentium, unlike a 300 mh power pc chip in a mac,has to process all the information it gets, all the time..whereas the mac one ( like an ibook) just processes what it needs, which would make a 300 mh power pc chip fly....... Sure, i'd go with the mac (but i'm biased,however, i used my PC regularly till i got a powermac , but have barely touched it since..). Networking between macs anc PC's isn't the problem anymore that it might have been previously, but i've not done it so i cant be specific... Frankly, i really like the classic os's like OS 9...it , and 10 (X), cant be 'emulated', however, on a pc, cause emulaters only emulate the older 68k macs which only went as high as 8.1.. i wouldn't myself go for the linux as a second OS unless you really like endless tweaking...but tho it's a less painful install than yhe old unix it's not hassle free, and you sure need a lot of harddrive space etc. A great second os for a PC would be BeOS, actually, (free download at Bebits.com) , but i suspect you wouldn't spend a lot of time playing with it if you got that ibook... Macs can be addictive.

Dump the windows box... well maybe not entirely, coz u will still need it for certain tasks. That said, The latest gen Macs are absolutely awesome and are so much easier to use then windows boxes As for choosing the right machine, i'd go for the secod generation iBook as apposed to the clamshell model. These run OS X 10.2 Jaguar better, which is a sinch to network with windows boxes, a lot better then OS X 10.1 I agree, Macs are addictive