well it's been a long time, but i have been thinking, macs are not worth the money so i didnt get one mainly because they seem to be restricting in a way and also complicated (the touchpad interface, is too confusing for my liking)

one of the main reasons i wanted a mac was that i thought they didnt get virus as easy a microsofts, but they can so i thought to myself whats the point

christmas is coming up and im doing some serious research into getting a new windows

but hey on the subjects of macs i got myself an iphone 3gs for my birthday, thats enough mac for me and i am very impressed with it though, still dont change my recent opinion of macs - over priced, not worth the money and restricting

Well then, with the release of Windows 7, maybe you should build your own pc and Windows 7 as the OS.

Depends what you want a computer to do really.

I've always been anti-Mac, viewing the early see-through CRT iMac with a certain amount of disdain, I never thought it looked good. However, I've not always been a fan of every Windows release either, anyone remember that nightmare known as WinME? How about the system resources to run Vista properly? So I've stuck with XP, at least until March 2009.

At that point I was buying a new laptop for video editing, and it needed to be 99.999% reliable, so I looked around the market, and nothing beat the MacBook Pro 17" with iWork09 and Final Cut Express 4.0.

My previous experience has always been unexplained crashing of Windows Vista, loss of footage, having to turn loads of Windows features off, including anti-virus and anti-spyware, just to have sufficient resources available, frankly MS gave me a poor experience as a video editing platform.

So I bought the Apple, and frankly I've never looked back, for the purpose I bought it for it's been perfect, never had a fault or glitch. There's been a few problems to overcome, not least needing to configure part of the single touch pad as a right click, but that took minutes. I've never bothered in the last six months to learn how to use the extra keys that Apple provide for command functions, I've never needed to use them.

I edit one, possibly two, hour long DVDs every week, depending on commitments, from filming, to downloading the raw HD footage, to video and DVD editing. I have a deadline of 72 hours between filming and delivery of the finished DVD, and frankly I don't think Windows could cope with this without falling over, or spending more than I spent on the Mac, and receiving less performance and reliability.

So it depends on what you're going to be using the computer for; as it is I'm thinking of trading in a couple of old XP laptops for Windows 7 Netbooks, because I have a need for mobile browsing, however, Apple are about to allow Orange to sell the iPhone, and the restriction on phone network was the only thing stopping me getting one of those, so its possible that one of the Netbooks will end up being an iPhone 3 GS instead.

Horses for courses, and no I've not had one infection, virus or spyware since using a Mac in the last six months.

Orange have access to sell it on 5th of november unless it's changed

Orange are quoting the 10th November on their website for the iPhone