Please send $20 to … Just kidding…sorta. I am considering making the leap from Pc to Mac. I don’t use my PC for anything more than internet browsing and some light gaming. Nothing network intensive. Creatively I can do all the video and picture stuff I need with what comes bundled on XP. I really don’t need the enhanced media capabilities inherent in a Mac. But Mac can do all the things I need. Through my work I can get a discount on Macs, which helps. What do you consider the minimum system reqs? I have an 80gig hd that Ihave never come close to filling. I am not media hog. How about RAM? I see some with 3MB shared. Is that enough? The only thing I have now with an Apple logo is my iPod Classic . What other peripherals will I need? I realize this is prrobably the jilllionth Mac thread. I appreciate your patience and assistance.
Sorry for the lack of paragraph breaks. I am posting.from my.phone. It doesn’t usually do that.
Well do you want a desktop or laptop? There are not many Mac computers to choose from really.
If you don’t have one, get an external drive so you can take advantage of the Mac’s faboo back-up program, Time Machine. I have a Western Digital 500 Gig My Book.
I think that the MacBook is Apple’s best machine. An absolutely fantastic piece of technology.
Seconded. I’ve got last year’s 13" macbook (the white one - it’s still available and cheaper than the new aluminum ones) and it’s perfect. Just get one with at least 2 Gb of RAM and you’re all set.
I bought a MacBook about fifteen months ago. At the time, one gigabyte of memory was standard and it would have cost about $800 to upgrade it to 4GB. So I bought it with the one gig, and then ordered 4GB from Newegg (I think) for about $200, or a quarter of what Apple wanted. I bought the extended protection plan. And I had a license of XP at home so I used Bootcamp to create a dual-boot system (partly because I already owned a license of Office for Windows). And while you say now that 80GB seems like enough of a hard drive, I recommend getting a larger one if possible, as you don’t know what you’ll need in the future.
Seconding the MacBook. The new single-body aluminum ones are pretty spectacular.
80 gigs? I have 80 gigs of music on my MacBook Pro. I had the original 120-gig hard drive removed and a 320-gig drive inserted, and it still seems a little cramped at times (granted, 100 gigs of that is a Windows partition…) I’ve also maxed out the memory at 3 gigs. New machines don’t have that limitation.
As with most computers, decide what you want to do with it first, and let that drive your hardware and software choices. If you’re just doing basic web surfing and email, pretty much any Mac will do. You can then choose whether you want portability, and how big a screen you want.
Basic video editing? Macs come with programs to do that, but it would be a good idea to get a larger hard drive to store the files; I have 160 gigs of video files from a couple of years ago that started off as just 9 hours of tape transfers.
If you’re doing 3D rendering, get a Mac with a separate video card. Many graphics programs, especially 3D ones, don’t like the shared video memory of the MacBook.
You can only get a 80gb hard drive on a MacMini, otherwise all their computers are 120 or more, lots around 250. And only MacMinis and the cheapest iMac’s don’t have 2gb RAM.
I’d recommend the Aluminum MacBook over the white one. I have the white one, and it’s had some annoying problems with the plastic. The palm-rest just below the keyboard has broken twice, and been replaced twice. My girlfriend has the same model, and hers is now broken, too. When I brought it in the last time, the shop mentioned that that particular model suffered from problems with the case plastic a lot. Luckily, mine has been under warranty this whole time. Supposedly, the Al bodies are much more resistant to this sort of thing.
I just got it back from the shop for the 3rd time in 2.5 years because the DVD drive died, but I’m pretty sure that’s just a fluke.
Also recommending the new Macbook. It is thin yet sturdy and the touchpad works great.
We have four Macs at home, although only two are in active use. My wife and I have identical 20" iMacs with the 2 GB Core-Duo processor and 250 MB hard drives. She has Windows installed on hers through Bootcamp, for a couple PC-only pieces of software that she has messed around with from time-to-time, so we do have Windoze availability if we need it (yecch).
My work computer is an HP laptop with identical hardware to my iMac, right down to the processor, RAM, and hard drive sizes and speeds. That thing has crashed on me more times in the past year (including a fatal hard drive crash last week) than all my Apples COMBINED since I bought my first one in 1996 (that Performa still runs fine, BTW; just very slow compared to the new machines). Aside from ease of use, the thing I have consistently appreciated about the Macs I’ve dealt with is their reliability and stability.
Anyway, to the question at hand, if you’re not planning to put the machine through some rigorous computing, you probably don’t need to go high end with your selection – it really comes down to a choice between laptop or desktop and then size of screen. My BIL who is a Mac programmer always recommends getting the best video card you can when you buy, and then recommends maxing out your RAM after market, as Apple’s pricing for RAM is high.
If you do some gaming, you’ll likely find that most of the PC titles you’re familiar with are available for the Mac platform, so the switch shouldn’t be too tough there. And as for peripherals, chances are good that many or all of the devices you have right now – printers, joysticks, etc… – will plug and play just fine into your new Mac. USB devices are usually a sure thing for full compatibility IME, while other devices might require an extra cable or might simply not work. At any rate, the only peripherals you really need to get going are a printer and a USB hub, I’d say, although I’d also recommend getting an external hard drive for Time Machine, as noted above – sweet app! Beyond that, most everything is built in, from the internal mic and iSight camera, to wireless modem, along with your bundled software that should get you underway without too much trouble.
Is the RAM just click to install? The same stuff you buy for PC? Not special Mac RAM?
Yes, but you need to get exactly the right stuff. Just like in the PC world, not all RAM is created equal - I buy mine from a company that guarantees that it will work with a Mac - memorytogo.com.
I have a late-2007 white Macbook. I love it. I did upgrade to 2gb of ram - I think it would run fine on one, but two makes it lovely.
Seconding the recommend of an external hard drive, because A) backups are Very Good and B) Time Machine is the most painless, effortless backup system in the universe.
I would recommend that you go to an Apple store (if there’s one nearby) or a Best Buy and play around with the demo models, just to make sure you do like the interface and such. Never buy a computer blind.
You beat me to it!
Yeah, you need to get the correct chip set, but I’ve installed RAM in a couple of my computers now, and it’s really no more complicated than popping open the right access into the computer, sticking the card into the correct slot, and closing the machine back up again. Very easy to do, even for a schmuck like me. 
I originally was using a MacBook Pro, and a few months back I gave that to my wife and went to a 24" iMac.
I heartily recommend the 24" iMac, because of the desktop real estate.
I was on the fence between 20" and 24" and I thought about how I wouldn’t be able to get those 4 extra inches down the road, so I went for the larger one and am extremely happy.
Consider getting Parallels or VMWare Fusion and running XP or Vista in a VM, it helps smooth over the switching process.
Good luck! 
My gf has the 13" Macbook in white (last year’s model) and I have the 15" Macbook Pro (also last year’s model). In the entire time I’ve had this computer, I only had one issue and it was my own fault (used my gf’s 60 W charger mistakenly, mine’s 85 W…luckily I had no serious problems with the battery as a result of my oversight).
I use my MBP every single day for everything…I run Adobe CS3, iTunes, the internet and email, and I even have Parallels and Windows XP for AutoCAD, Revit, and Viz 2008. I actually dread booting into Windows to use those programs simply because the interface is not as nice, but I’m stuck until Autodesk releases CAD and BIM programs for Mac (not holding my breath for that one). I usually just run Windows side by side with Leopard using Parallels, and I don’t really notice a dropoff in performance. If I need to do intensive 3D work, I boot into Windows natively and my MBP becomes a gasp PC with all the resources I need.
If you go for a laptop, do consider getting AppleCare. It’s pretty expensive, but they cover everything (e.g. mice, keyboards) you buy at the time you get the laptop, and AppleCare is a few notches above any other warranty program.
(Just got home from the Apple store where the Genius Bar guys swapped out a 2yo MacBook Pro battery for free)
When first I bought my iPhone, it was having some battery life issues of its own, and I called up AppleCare. The guy who I spoke to treated me with such respect and care, as if I were discussing a repair on a brand new Rolex with the jeweler. He shipped me one Fedex the next day, and I popped the old one in the box and sent it back.
It didn’t occur to me until some months later that they had been selling ~20,000 iPhones per day, and I still was treated as a unique individual :).