I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop that is on it’s last legs. The rechargeable battery gave up the ghost a few years ago and I’m now on my 3rd external power supply. When I got this 6 (?) years ago 80 GB seemed like TONS of space. I got that sorted this year thanks to my Dad’s most generous Christmas gift of a 1 TB external hard drive. But the old beast is just running slow and often goes on strike leaving my hung where good ol ‘control-alt-delete’ doesn’t even work to try and shut things down to reboot.
So I’ve been thinking about what I will replace this with when the time comes (i.e. I find out what my company bonus is and what I can afford).
I have a number of friends of the iMac variety and they’re trying to lure me over to the ’white’ side and I have been giving it a good honest think. I am a photographer in my spare time so was thinking of the whole Macs are for the creative, PCs are for the logical.
I was also giving thought to multi-tasking. I don’t have cable or even a freeview box. I pay my TV license because I LOVE the BBC iPlayer and so partake of the visual media via my laptop. I’d heard very good things about the Mac screens and was thinking if I got an iMac Desktop with a 27 inch screen that would be big enough to be like a TV almost. It would free up some space in my spare room and I could give away my current TV to anyone that wants it as the only thing I was using it for was watching movies that required a bigger screen (explosions!).
What I use my computer for is email, watching the iPlayer & DVDs, Skype video calls to my friends & family, keeping financial records (aka spreadsheets), surfing the net etc - but the biggest thing I use it for is editing of my photos. I mostly shoot film so I’m not doing heavy manipulation just cropping, some curves, levels and maybe a little colour correction. I do add in EXIF data but now we’re getting into geeky photography stuff and that’s not the purpose of this post.
Would I really benefit from a Mac for the above? I’m not worried about the change of thought process moving from a PC to Mac. In talking with those that have switched they say it’s not a difficult transition and it’s a quick learning curve. I’m not overly concerned about software as my scanner is Mac compatible and the minimal manipulation I do in photoshop isn’t worth getting a Mac version. I’m pretty sure iPhoto has what functionality I need.
The biggest thing that’s holding me back is price, and the debate I have in my head asking if spending 1400 GBP is responsible/frugal when I could easily upgrade my current laptop with a larger model (17 inch monitor) for under 500 GBP.
I’ve had some tell me that Macs don’t need to be upgraded as often as PCs so if in 6 years time I’m still using the same unit then I could see some value there.
So I pose the question to you people out there in cyber space, is a Mac worth the price in my case? If so why? I’d be very interested in reading any PC migration to Mac experiences.
And I promise to let you know what I end up buying…
