h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If I recall correctly, It is against the licensing rules to run OSX on non-Apple hardware as the license is not transferable.

That said, if any machine suffers catastrophic failures then I would check the hardware first.

I finally did it. I bought an Intel iMac, a 17" 2.0GHz. Compared to the old G3 iMac it is like lightning!!!

No funeral for the G3 though. I wiped the hard drive and re-installed OS X for our little person. who is cocker-hoop!

turvy

This is a much later reply to the whole iMac/Windows thing.

First, I have a laptop running Windows Vista, which (other than the lack of hardware and software drivers in the first 6 months after its release , though I bought my laptop after this was no longer a problem) has been extraordinarily stable.

The Mac OS is something people either love or hate (same is true of Windows and Linux). For instance I intensely dislike the Mac "feature" of ripping away the main menu from an application and putting it at the top of the display. OTOH my wife, who has a Mac, loves the menu feature, and claims the user interface was easy for her to learn.

I like the fact that there are many applications available for Windows, far more than Macs. Many of them are freeware (like the Firefox browser) or are available at a modest price. Firefox is also available for Macs, incidentally, though other software is not as easily available.

I like Vista's very good security (called UAC for User Access Control), and believe it or not, the fact that if you are changing something that might affect security, UAC asks you whether you really meant to do that. Many people don't like UAC.

Mac users say they don't need added security, that MacOS has it built in. I suspect that the black hats just haven't taken the time to produce malware for the Mac, because ther are relatively few of them.

I also don't like that MacOS will only run on a much more expensive Mac (the OS checks for the presence of some chip before loading). Windows (well, XP or Vista) runs on many PCs, by design. Windows will run on a Mac if it has an Intel processor.

Macs come with a bunch of software when you buy the computer or OS. Unfortunately much of that software isn't stuff that I would use (Garage Band???).

Windows machines come with a bunch of software too, but then you have to get all the stuff off the machine (like FREE MUSIC, only not really because it's protected) that you know you're not going to use.

As far as where to buy a Mac, buy it from any dealer (Apple owned or other) that sells it where you live, and then continue to support that dealer. If there are no local dealers, then buy mail order. Same with PCs, incidentally.