Your a graphic artist/designer right Tom?

Trust me,

A Macbook Pro will be the best investment you ever make.

Why? I'm a skeptic I need evidence!

Shut your whore mouth! Jump in and be a man.

As soon as I got my Macbook, I had my excuse to become well more productive (I do audio and video production)

Obviously there was the financial investment but more importantly, I am using industry standard software on a platform where it WORKS.

In the past I had so many problems with working on PC's to do my work as the programs I use are so resource intensive. Since I moved to Mac I can only think of one or two instances where I have had problems.

The work flow of OSX and its programs just seem to be geared towards creative arts. I would say however if your a programmer/developer then use a PC. Oh and using an old G4 aint gonna cut it, when I was at college I was forced to use a G3 and it was piece of shit. In the past 4 years Apple have REALLY upped there game, the hardware they bring out now is jaw dropping.

^^This

I am currently spending my last pennies on upgrading to a pro. I work with video editing and it's just easier in so many ways.

If you do want a mac look at the refurbs in the US mac store. They are quite a bit cheaper and come with a world wide warranty. Only issue is you need someone in the states to buy it for you as they won't sell internationally.

I'm currently trying to string together a half decent layout for the results section for my dissertation using a PC. That means graphs, fitting text around figure legends and copying and pasting from a different format. Trust me Tom, whatever shit your Mac is giving you, it is nothing compared to the kind of shit a PC would give you.

Like, for example, simply selecting one of my graphs takes my computer 2 attempts and about 30 seconds. It does this every time you want to click on something. And then whenever you do something unexpected like add some text, it flips out and ruins the whole set-up. I am extremely angry about this. Numerous choice insults have been levelled at my PC during the last hour, and all the while, I'm thinking "why oh why didn't I fork out an extra couple of hundred quid and get myself a Macbook?"

Rant over. Back to the hell of getting a PC to do something. Anything. Honestly, it's like trying to get a retarded cousin to compose a symphony orchestra.

Blanca that's more a problem with the programs you are using as to what system you are on, my guess is it's office which is evil and designed by idiots.
I'd use indesign for the layout and illustrator for the graphs for the stuff you are on about, have you got publisher in office? Try that i've never used it but that's more like indesign.

Also I have a Pc so I know what kind of shit they can give you and to be honest the only real problems i've had are with 3d graphics programs but then again I was using 'acquired' copies on a pretty slow old system years ago at uni.

Also my 3d graphics program of choice XSI isn't on a mac and maya is only 32bit on mac.
Although I don't use 3d stuff for work at home I still like to dabble but I've done quite a bit of work on indesign, illy and potatoshop on my old pc and that was fine I never had any issues.

If I was doing work freelance then I might but i'm not and in the past pc hardware was better and mac operating system was better but now I think they have both made improvements.

Mac have got intel chips and Xp is about 9 years old, Vista was bloated and slow but now windows 7 seems to be from what i've seen a huge improvement. I was still treating it like Xp and it surprised me how good it was.

I'll get a new mac for work see how it compares to windows 7 on my new pc. My old flat mate had a mac book pro from work and he didn't think he would buy one unless he was loaded.

I wouldn't get a mac book pro anyway i'm not really into laptops. Although I have a laptop for making music running ableton live, reason, multiple guitar rig and various plug ins at the same time, that doesn't have many issues and that's running vista!

I'd probably get mac pro but for the price of one of them starts a about £2000!! for that price I could build a beast of a pc with solid state drives, also I could easily upgrade it for cheap.

I guess Jaz and Mycroft you are using final cut pro so you have to use a mac because you can't get it on pc because its a apple product. Since I don't use final cut pro and PS, AI and ID work fine I don't see much use blowing an extra £1200 so I can have a mac

Haha timing! The IT guy has come to me and asked if I can have a look at a portable HD because the photographer we use has lost all the work on it, the system... osX but the IT guy can look at it on a pc using mac drive.

I have an Amstrad CPC 464 for sale if your interested?