Wow, some guy asks for advice for a computer purchase and it turns into a "I know more than you" thread. I have been reading the thread for a few days and could not resist jumping in so here goes.

Seems to me there are a few folks here not old enough nor experienced enough to know the history or the benefits of the PC or the MAC systems. It is generally accepted that Steve Jobs and company far outshined the Bill Gates camp in pure improvements in the technology end of the systems. The real problem stemmed from the fact that Jobs decided to keep everything about the Apple products a deep guarded secret while Gates was smart enough to have a somewhat "open" system which allowed software developers a chance to write useful products for the PCs while the Apple guys went wanting. It also is known that Zerox developed the popular user interface we now know as the windows system which Gates literally "stole" from Zerox and used in his first edition of the Windows operating system.

I can remember when I was teaching technology classes on the old original Apple systems, the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Amiga systems, the the first IBM systems. Yes, the place I taught decided to use them all. We even built up a few z-80 systems from scratch and they worked pretty well also.

The corporate world jumped from the old IBM mainframe systems which used the old green screen moniters to the IBM PC systems on the user end because IBM had the reputation of being the best in the business. Gates licensed his OS to IBM and the rest is history as they say. If Steve Jobs had been that smart we would be entrenched in a MAC world today.

The main problem with the PC world has been created by those folks who have seen fit to cause Microsoft as much trouble as possible and create all the virus software. This also has a history which dates back to how Bill Gates and company ram rodded their way into a lot of sectors. On his way to the top his company created a ton of microsoft haters - each one for a different reason.

The very same thing has happened in the network world. For a long time I was a Novell Certified Network Instructor teaching very expensive high end network classes to the IT guys from the corporate world. Novell's OS is outstanding but they could not match the marketing dollars of microsoft and slowly we saw NT, then other Microsoft products replace many of the Novell networks.

In today's world I doubt it makes much difference which system a user selects. There is great software for each system. I can't speak for the software used for music production because I don't use those products - but I do know just about anything else you can do on one system can be done on the other. Seems to me it is rather like the old "Ford vs Chevy" arguments that once prevailed.

Meanwhile, if you really want to help Mike with his question why not take a step back and stop all the uninformed, opinioned, crap and try to help the man. If you like your system - tell him why. If you hate your system - tell him why. If you have not actually used each system than contain your comments to the system you really have some experience with.

Well - all this is just my opinion too.

Hammer

Hammer