I am thinking of getting a new laptop. I noticed the cheapest mac was about $1000, whereas I can get a cheap HP for about $550. The cheaper machine is kind of appealing, but the idea of a linux type system for a mac appeals to me however. I've always liked working on unix/linux at various companies, but I've always owned IBM clone PC and have never owned a mac.
I have a HP laptop that is not quite 3 years old. I've downloaded alot of stuff, and the machine seems to run alot slower than it used to. It takes along time to boot, and it's gotten really bad, though I do have AVG. I get the impression that spyware on a mac would be less of a problem and that type of degradation might not happen as fast on a mac or that I could more easily figure out what the heck was running on the machine ?
I also hear that there is less software for macs, I might like to use winscp, a graphical SVN or such that is not to hard to install. I'm not sure what else ofhand .. OpenOffice must work on a mac I might guess ..
Right now my ITunes library is on an external USB drive, I assume if I started up ITunes on a mac it would import stuff from my IPod to itself as this happened when I first moved my lib to an external drive.
I get the impression that Rails development on a mac might be somewhat better, but I'm curious what people have to say on that ?