If you are planning to switch, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons.

Apple's design may appeal to you and win the awards, but ultimately it is what you can do with the computer that makes a difference - I will venture to say that for the most part, Apple does not do anything that a similarly priced PC does not do.

Another reason people often cite for the change is that Mac is more stable - that is not true. People in the know, the advanced users, report as many problems and crashes with the Macs as with the PCs. The reason many people's experience with the Mac is more trouble-free is because a typical user's Mac will have only a few applications installed, all Apple-approved. In contrast, because there is a great number more of tempting applications available for the PC, a typical PC user will have dozens more applications loaded and running on their machine. Even though these individual apps may work perfectly fine by themselves, their interaction with each other will sometimes cause problems. Still, if you are able to exercise self-discipline and limit the number of apps you are running on your PC, it will be every bit as stable as the Mac.

The third reason is that PCs are more susceptible to virus attacks - that is true, but simply because virus writers find it more fruitful to create a virus for a PC - with the overwhelming number of worldwide users running Windows, there is a very high probability that their virus will be fertile. There are much fewer viruses written for less-popular operating systems, but there are some out there for the Mac and Linux.

Performance is another motivator to switch to a Mac, but the ads are often misleading. For years Mac was saying that PowerPC processor was faster than Intel chips, but now they have switched to Intel processors, and all of a sudden they are four times faster than they used to be. So I guess, the PowerPC was not as fast as the Intel chips in the first place.

The Mac's operating system is better suited for processing multi-channel audio and video - that is true. But unless you are recording dozens of channels simultaneously, the PC will work just as well.

Best of luck with your computer decision,

Alex