I considered buying a Mac last year as I needed to upgrade from my laptop which my dad now uses (1.66Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR2 RAM, some crappy nVidia GeForce FX series GPU with shared memory, 17" screen, and a 256GB HDD).
I have been interested in Linux for some time, and I hated Windows Vista as it was fairly slow and annoying on such a slow system, so I ran Ubuntu.
When I came to buy a new system, I decided to move away from the whole laptop idea as I don't really need a portable system.
My new system was going to be connected to my 32" HDTV in my bedroom as I don't watch much TV and it'd allow me to watch online content such as YouTUBE or Netflix instead.
I wouldn't say that I was much of a PC gamer at the time, so something like a Mac Mini might have been a reasonable option as it would be small enough to be tucked away using a wireless keyboard and mouse to keep things tidy.
I have had an iPhone 3G (which I now rarely use for music) and several different iPods (Nano G2, Nano G4 which I still have and a Touch G1) and I even have a really old dead Powerbook that is about as big as a car.
When I came to actually buy a new system though, I bought a Windows PC instead as I just couldn't see the point in paying quite a lot more for a system just because it has a pretty metal case and a big brand logo on the top.
I recently tried to find out (for LOL's) what the price of a Mac with similar specs to my current system would be and it was quite a bit more:
My system (Packard Bell):
CPU: Intel Core i5 2300 quad core 2.8Ghz
HDD: WD 1TB SATA
RAM: 6GB Samsung DDR3
GPU: nVidia GeForce GT 420 W\ 1GB dedicated GDDR3 memory
Keyboard & mouse: wireless chicklet style keyboard and wireless optical scroll mouse both connected via a microscopic USB connector like what Logitech uses.
Card reader: SD, SD Micro, xD, Compact Flash and whatever Memory Stick garbage nobody cares about.
Optical drive: DVD burner (says it's a super multi drive or something)
WiFi: 802.11b, g & n
OS: Windows 7 64Bit
Price: £599
Mac Mini with as close as I can get specs:
CPU: Intel Core i5 dual core 2.5Ghz (Hyper-Threading makes it pretend to be a quad core but it's still a slower CPU)
HDD: 750GB SATA (nearly 300GB less :[)
RAM: 4GB DDR3 (a third less)
GPU: AMD Radeon 6630M W\ 256MB dedicated GDDR5 memory (the GeForce GT 420 is a nasty OEM only card, but it does have more memory and I can swap it out for a better one).
Keyboard & mouse: I added the cheapest ones Apple does, which are wired and add £80 to the price (£40 each).
Card reader: Nope.
Optical drive: £66 extra for an external USB drive from the MacBook Air.
WiFi: 802.11b, g & n
OS: OSX Lion
Price: £965 or £819 without the keyboard, mouse or optical drive.
So, it'd cost me about £366 more for the Mac Mini than it did for my Packard Bell Ixtreme (I couldn't be bothered building it myself, but I will be upgrading it) and the only benefits of the Mini are that it takes up a bit less space, has a Unix based OS and is finished in aluminium (which will dent as soon as you look at it if my Nano G2 was anything to go by).
My system isn't overly big despite being a tower and as it's gloss black with pale blue lighting around the edge, it looks like it'd be at home in Tron.
Also, I have 8 USB ports which aren't filled with external drives and card readers, space for a hot swappable second HDD, a holder for an external HDD (with a cable tidy compartment) and buttons I'll never use for things I can get to with 2 mouse clicks.
Windows 7 hasn't crashed on me yet (Ubuntu has crashed more
) and I've never had a virus as it's not hard to find decent security software and I can do all the random stuff iLife does without any hassle as my PC came with Photoshop Elements 8 and I know X\HTML and CSS as well as dabbling in Ruby, Pascal, PHP and other programming languages.
Plus I can play lots of games without damaging my cool factor by installing the enemy on my hipster box.
Also, anyone who buys a £15 HDMI cable from Apple is a moron as you can get one that's just as good for £4.97 from Tesco... Or for free if it happens to come from a Virgin Media box that's no longer used
