Switching from Mac to PC?

[GeNome]

Has this ever been asked before?

I've had my 17" iMac for several months now. It's been a wonderful computer - OS X is amazing, it's quite, it's sexy. But it's not all it was cracked up to be. Playing games is a pain, managing photos and videos is awkward, compatibility with PC's is near impossible, and having an un-upgradable 160GB HDD that is quickly running out of space doesn't help either. And you can't remedy any of those problems without spending a lot of money. Which is where my extremely small student budget comes in. I'll be starting 11th grade this year, attending our local community college through a Running Start program, and am starting to think selling my Mac and getting a PC and a laptop might not be a bad idea. Here is what I'm thinking of getting:

Gateway w/ 17" LCD (or something similar) and the Asus EeePC when it comes out.

The desktop would be used for some gaming and graphic design, but mostly movies, music, photos and browsing the web/school. The Asus would be used for note taking on campus/using around town, etc.

Another factor is that I've already gone through multiple PC's, until I finally settled on the Mac when I had had enough of Window's issues. My mom is completely tired of my going from computer to computer, so it would be hard to convince her to let me do this.

Anyhoo, just wondering what the community thought of it. Practical or pointless?

 

[LtPage1]

I'm not quite sure what you're talking about with photos and videos, I have WAY more trouble keeping everything organized on a Windows machine. Also, I've been using both platforms for years, and it's been a long time since I had any compatibility problems (and I don't even have an Intel Mac yet). Not sure what you're referring to there.

If you were a seriously hardcore gamer who needed to keep upgrading every component every so often, I'd say go with a Windows machine and build your own. But it sounds like you're really better off with the iMac, honestly. Don't take the financial hit by selling and re-buying. External hard drives are cheap these days, and you can always dual-boot Windows if you really feel like you have to.

 

[Twsmit]

Buy a 500GB hard drive for around $100-150, put it in an external case for $30 and call it a day. If you really need windows, dual boot with bootcamp or buy parallels. I agree with LtPage1 that you should stick with the mac. If you need a laptop, by all means get a $400-500 cheapo laptop, but don't sell the mac if your only problems are hard drive space and game compatibility. Those can be remedied with only a couple hundred bucks.

 

[GeNome]

Yeah, I've thought it over some more and have decided to stay with the Mac. I'm already running XP under Bootcamp without any problems, so my Windows needs are pretty much taken care of. As long as high temps don't adversely affect the machine, and I can upgrade the HDD/RAM, it'll be fine. Thanks though!