I'm primarily a musician and have the Garritan Personal Orchestra (Win & Mac, same box.) Simply put, after 20 years of PC's I think I've had enough - I'm sick of the stupid issues and errors, rebooting, reformatting, reinstalling, crashes, viruses and spyware. I'm no newbie... near-expert. I'm sick of it all!

I just want a computer to work!

Thing is, it has to work well! The Mac mini is great, but I'm not quite sure if it's powerful enough to do the job (it'll do... but will choke with too many sound options added) and must have AT LEAST 1GB of RAM... the ceiling of the Mini.

The G5 iMac looks downright sexy! I love it.... but I have to choke a little at the price of it. And I've read reports of iMac G5's overheating and having all kinds of heat-related problems.

I'd like to make the move... if you guys can convince me of the quality of the product, how it'll improve my music creation, and find a better price than Apple.ca, I'd appreciate it.

I'll be visiting these forums regularly now.

Oh... That, and I'll need to sell off my brand new Dell 4700 PC w/ 17" LCD. I might need to advertise that one.... It'll generate MOST of the cash required for the Mac.

I just wish the mini was a little faster... and maybe some more room for RAM.

I'll also be glad that my entire game library will be rendered useless. I have GOT to stop wasting my time with games! Good riddance!

Oh hey... one last thought... what about the Intel-based Macs? Is that a year away? New software required? Should I wait or make the jump?

Thanks!

Now's the time to switch.. the 17" iMac rev.B is on sale at Best Buy for $1299! Get 'em while they're hot!

I have a 20" iMac rev.B that has been working great since I got it in May. I popped my own RAM in, and it's very speedy. Get RAM from someone else.. not Apple.. too expensive.

I've been worried about the hardware failures, too.. all I can say is mine has been okay (so far) and other online sties, such as Consumer Reports, seem to look favourably at Apple's hardware failure rates.

Correction, $1399.

Make sure you keep your expectations under control. Rendering your game library obsolete won't stop you thinking about playing games if you have that common obsession. Apple is a great computer system integrator, but they use many standard parts that will fail just as often as they do on PCs - hard drives for instance. If you want to sell a used computer and use the cash for MOST of the purchase price of a new one, going with Apple is not going to magically even out the cost by better value; even in the Mac world, you get what you pay for. People buying cheap generic RAM, for example, can expect a high risk of hardware failure and instability.

The main way to get a better price than Apple.ca is to buy your upgrades (hard drive, RAM, but not Superdrive) elsewhere, keeping in mind you should still go for high quality stuff - don't get greedy; plus if you're handy you can save money by installing them yourself.
Get good hardware, and the software stability of Mac OS X will blow you away. As someone who likes to be creative with the computer, I find the consistent performance day after day takes your mind off the computer and lets you emote. The user interface is so often more carefully designed, that when I compare my DELL at work to my PowerBook, I'm pretty sure the Mac takes an average of one less click to do any given task.
The virus situation is not going to change any time soon. UNIX is the way to set your mind at ease.
If you can make use of applications that Apple designed, such as GarageBand and Final Cut Pro, you find the same elegant solutions in the way you use software that you see with the iPod click-wheel. It makes so much sense that it's hard to design anything better.

Another option is to go used - hang on to your Dell's LCD and buy a G4 tower either from a dealer or from the classifieds here on ehmac. With the introduction of the mini the prices have been dropping on used towers, and they're easier to upgrade too (plus I think all of them support at least 1.5 gigs of RAM).

An older G4 tower may also give me the option of DUAL G4's which would be very nice. Actually... how does dual-processor stuff work on the Mac? I know in the PC world, one CPU is for each application unless the program is designed for dual CPUs. Pretty lousy, actually.

Yes, I would seriously consider this route.

The heating problems of the G5 iMacs were primarily with the first edition. Rev B not so.

A dual would probably be handy is you like to have a lot of apps open. Currently I have a single processor G4 tower with 2 gigs of RAM. It is only when I have my Mail, Safari, Photoshop, Word and Final Cut Pro open (and encoding something) that I will get a slow-down (otherwise known as the spinning beachball).

As others have mentioned, hard drives do fail but they're cheap enough nowadays you can easily mirror your drives and never worry about lost data. And the G4 is especially roomy to install at least 4 drives. Best all it's the easiest Mac to do your own upgrades. Everything is easy to reach. If you already have a monitor, a used dual will suit your needs nicely without a huge expense

OS X should handle this a bit better - Apple's had dual CPU machines as a big part of their business for so long, and the OS is just better designed. You should definitely get an idea of what music creation application you're interested in before deciding, cause you may see a lot of benefit with that type of program depending what you pick. It's probably not going to double the performance but it could be close, especially if it's dual G5 with that great memory bandwidth, or one of the dual G4 configs that had lots of L2 or L3 cache per processor. It's not all about the processor subsystem though, the drive system's important too. Anyway, www.macdoc.com makes great music configs that push the performance envelope.

Cost is definately an issue, though. $1600 Canadian is about my limit... and lower, if possible, so I can get myself a sound + midi controller (external or internal) on the side.

1.5-2GB of RAM would be very, very nice.

Whoa! Hey! Wait a minute.... that's $1299 CANADIAN!!

Now THAT I could jump on with no qualms! Probably not the superdrive for that price, but I can live with that.