Apple Power Macintosh G4 (Z03W) Mac Desktop

My husband and I are new Mac converts, with a mixed bag of results.

Good news:
There are some things that are undeniably wonderful about going Mac including the iPod (best MP3 player I have seen or read about, I think the reviews are pretty consistent on that front) and the new creativity-oriented applications like iPhoto. Being into photography, we thought the Mac a worthwhile investment. The design is very thoughtful, inside and out. Not only is the machine a breath of fresh aesthetic air compared to ugly, neutral-colored boxes you get from other companies (the Mac knock-offs notwithstanding), but unlike other companies, you won't nullify your warranty if you open the box. We bought a wireless LAN card for our machine and once my husband knew what he was doing, putting the card in was literally a matter of opening the latch on the console and snapping the card into place.

Additionally, the little pro speakers we bought are great and the machine produces such good sound that we often opt to play music from the computer rather than from the stereo.
The monitor works well and certainly isn't bulky. The keyboard, while on the small side, has 2 USB slots, which is very much appreciated (it's a start, anyway!). The mouse is elegant, though not terribly comfortable and I must admit to missing the opportunity to right click and more importantly to scroll with a track wheel, as with PCs. But it is infrared, which is nice. At least we won't be cleaning dust out of it.

Now for the Bad News:
If you're reading this, you likely know that an investment in a Mac is a statement and a commitment. You will spend more on hardware. You will spend more on software. You will spend more on at least some accessories by virtue of the fact that there are fewer suppliers and the market is smaller, in general. That said, the reason to make the jump has to include the Mac's reputation for worry-free computing and for us, at least, this purchase has been anything but worry free. Our biggest disappointment has been the instability of the operating system. MacOS X has crashed many, many times doing things as simple and non-resource intensive as surfing the Web.

This has required many calls to Customer Support and while they did always take my husband's calls, trying to resolve the problem by running through all the appropriate steps and hurdles has become tedious and time consuming. Customer support wanted us to call them every time we had an error or the machine crashed, but their customer service line is not open 24x7, so in order to follow their process and arrive at some resolution (we hoped that if we jumped through their hoops, they would fix our machine or give us our money back), we would often be stuck unable to use the machine until we could call and speak with someone who would then walk us through exactly what they wanted us to do. Clearly this quickly became untenable, and we basically gave up. The bottom line is that Apple would not take our machine back -- that simply wasn't ever an option, even after wiping the machine clean and reinstalling everything twice and upgrading to Jaguar (OS version 10.2) -- thereby taking on more expense.

Now the other option is to run the perfectly stable (from what we hear) MacOS 9, but the tradeoff is that you lose the ability to run all the cool new apps like iTunes and iPhoto (we've grown attached to iTunes as you read in the Good news section). So IMHO, in order to justify spending roughly twice what you would spend on a similar PC, you should perhaps wait until MacOS X lives up to the Mac reputation. OS X doesn't do it, and neither does 10.2.


Note: Price noted below is the approximate total after rebates and includes the tower, 17" monitor, 5 GB iPod, keyboard, mouse and pro speakers.