Part of me wants to ditch my currant PC and pretty much switch to Apple.
My desktop box is a windows 7 32 bit (I know, I know!) i7 2.8ghz cpu, quad core. I have a gigabyte p55-ud3r board in it, a geforce 8800 gts 4 gigs of ram, several TBs of hard drive space, like more then 5! I did pull a single 2tb drive out which will serve as a new external for my MBP)
A recent failed update has caused me a headache. I attempted to install a SSD for my operating system. I also added another 4gigs of ram and when I plugged everything in, pressed power and the thing did not even post. It beeped at me. Tried over a half dozen times making sure everything was set, plugged in and so on. I removed the ram and the thing booted right up. Got windows 7 64bit installed into the SSD. Right on! The speeds where nice even on a 3gbps sata 2 connection but the problems came on windows update. My PC went into a loop where it would download updates, I would shut down, the update would install and on boot up initialize. Then fail.
A couple days of this I got fed up and yanked the drive. I got two sticks of bad ram (it happens) and a fairly expensive solid state drive sitting in a drawer with windows 7 64 bit on it.
I have come to the conclusion either there was a setting I needed to select in either the bios or windows or something or my motherboard did not support the drive even though crucial said the drive would work. Or the drive is screwed. I hope not since its too late to send it back. The package it came in was a bit crushed.
Now, I do plan on trying the drive out in either my sisters laptop or putting it into my macbook pro..
Anyway, back to my desktop.
The driver issues I have been having, the recent update issues, windows it self, I am seriously thinking about switching over too mac. I really dig my MBP, I really wished I had the money for the 15" but this was an experimental purchase but it has kind of put me in a bind in looking for my next PC.
Now the specs of my MBP is 13" base model. 4gig ram, intel HD 3000 graphics (shared) 2.4 ghz dual core i5 CPU. Decent. Now, looking at a desktop replacement, the iMacs look decent, all in one, but I DON'T like how everything is plugged in the back of the monitor, kind of defeats the clean look of the machine. Also I have heard reports of yellow splotches along with the iMacs are hard to upgrade in the hard drive replacement. Also of something goes out, well that means the whole computer has to go in for repair instead of pulling the part out and swapping out. The iMacs feature a quad core CPU, though the cheaper smaller ones have quad core i5 cpus which is okay. Not like I am going to be cutting and editing much HD video, though I will probably do a little bit.
I have also thought about the Mac mini, which are pretty much non portable macbook pros almost identical specs but I was going to up the ante a little bit and get the dedicated GPU. But I do have a nice monitor, a wireless keyboard and mouse. The ram and hard drives can be gotten to, though the 2nd hard drive bay needs a special cable from ifixit and some work to get to, but its doable. The issue with this is, I can close the lid on my MBP and with external keyboards and trackpad, I can hook this up to my TV / monitor. But Since I have to buy a cable and possibly another keyboard and trackpad... well you get the idea. The best thing is, its seriously portable. Two wires. One to my monitor and one to wall for power. Pretty much the same with the iMac
Back to the PC / windows side of things.
I am sure my CPU is still good, along with my ram, PSU, video card (though it probably would not hurt to update that thing. The Nvidia drivers are causing some issues and have been for quite a while. And probably need a new case since mine is falling apart.
Perhaps a new motherboard, better ram and video card would make a decent update. Perhaps I could slide a new CPU in at a later time.
Then again, often times the thoughts of getting inside the case with the jumbled mess of wires and stuff just does not sound fun. Its also bulky, power hungry and heats up pretty good.
I do like to play games here in there, mostly the sims. Photo editing and used to photoshop CS3. Video cutting and editing has been soured by crappy software on windows. I would love to edit video if I can get the footage. Getting said footage has been hard but it really sucks when I do get something good and my PC causes me a headache trying to find something I can use to put a movie together. Maybe it is time for a change.
The bottom line if I go mac:
Hacking android could be a problem, but I can always run windows in a VM or dual boot. So that a moot point. I can't tinker with insides, but often times I don't like screwing around inside the tower so I guess that is a moot point. Some of my currant software is windows only, but read first point. Moot. Cost, but my MBP has a SOLID build. Seriously. Its nice.
I would likely miss tinkering inside of the tower of a PC after a while, but I guess after a break from windows I could get back into it.
Sorry, all. Not sure what the point of this post was other then to think out loud and perhaps get a little feedback along the way, or perhaps just to spill out my thoughts to help myself come to a conclusion. I am about 60% toward getting an iMac right now, about 80% from just getting away from windows (at least for now).
Hope no one minds me thinking this out loud. I know I probably should have posted this in the PC area, so I hope you don't mind I stuck it here since I was doing some random thinking out loud