Oh, yeah. I meant Wintel, not Mactel. The Dell will also have a faster hard drive - much faster. The Minis use laptop drives that are quite slow.
So - then why did I buy a Mac? I really like OS X. The hardware and software are both of a higher quality than a cheap Wintel Dell. And … I guess I’m crazy!
Heres a list of Apple stores.
I recommen Dave Pogue’s “MacOS X: The Missing Manual” for all Mac newcomers. Gives you all the smarts you need to use your computer without getting bogged down in technobabble. As an alternative, you may also want to look at Pogue’s “Switching to the Mac” book as well, as it explicitly covers migrating from Microsoft to Apple.
And to answer the OP, the only people who are more suited to Windows than Macs are masochists. 
A $500 Mac Mini isn’t a cutting-edge speed demon, but it is a reasonably painless way to get your toes into the Mac pool.
Windows XP is far, far superior to ME. OS X is a great operating system, and I really like Macs. But if price is an issue, or you want more raw power for your money, Windows XP should suit you just fine.
Definitely give XP a try. Having used pretty much every version of Windows that’s ever come out, I can say that it’s light-years better than 98/ME. It’s far more stable, there’s no learning curve, and it has drivers for pretty much anything you’re likely to plug in. (USB plugs are a gift from God in this regard, incidentally. I’ve never had to install a driver for a USB device.) Plus, a Windows computer will be cheaper than a comparable Mac, since you’re not paying that Apple markup.
If you like walking into an actual physical store, you can find several stores that are authorized Apple resellers in the big cities, plus the official Apple Stores themselves.
The best prices (short of eBay or the black market) are to be found by picking up a copy of MacWorld and MacAddict magazines from your local magazine store, turning to the back, and calling all the 800 number vendors. Price-shop them. Tell them you want a Mac mini, and will buy from the vendor with the best price as long as it comes with full warranty etc.
Oh, and
Not correct for a Mac. Macs are known for having longer-than-usual practical lifetimes, and an '01-vintage Mac such as the PowerBook G4 (Gigabit Ethernet, 667 MHz) or even low-end Macs like the '01 Indigo iMac (600 MHz G3) will run the latest MacOS X, is still officially supported by Apple, and will still do most of the normal everyday stuff you’d want to throw at a computer. Now, if you want to apply filters to your 2.5-hour digital video movie, or open and edit 1.27 GB TIFF files in Photoshop CS, well maybe they’re not the best tools for the job. But boot dependably and reliably, get you online, run the latest word processing and web browsing and email software, that sort of thing? On average, I’d say Macs become too old for that when they are about 10 years old, not 5. At 5, you can sell them for decent prices on eBay.
$4000 for the tower.
Of course, I’d ask what if you plan to run that’d require such a beast. If it’s nothing and you can already run everything you need, you could save yourself a lot of money and clean up your current machine. You’ll be able to find an old copy of Windows 2000 for pretty cheap and it’s at least as solid as XP.
Essentially you have had your answer, but your OP has some things that are incorrect.
Inside the main box of your computer is the Mother Board. The CPU is attached to it as are various other things. A CPU is a little one inch square piece of black rock that plugs into your mother board and is not the name of the whole big sucker sitting on your desk.
Now, whether you can swap out your five year old CPU for a modern one and have it still work against a five year old mother board is questionable. And even if you did get one which is supposed to work, to run Windows XP on it, you will probably need a lot more RAM than what you have. Again, RAM is attached to your mother board. Whether you can swap out your five year old RAM with modern ones that are big enough (in terms of data size not physical size) to run Windows XP and stable against your five year mother board is again questionable. If you wanted to just swap out the minimum number of parts, you would most likely have to replace your mother board, CPU, and RAM. Plus buy a copy of Windows XP. This would probably be about $500, shopping relatively smartly.
Depending on the minimum hard disk space required by Windows XP, you may have to add a new hard drive. Not to mention that if Windows ME was based on the FAT filesystem (?), then you’re going to have to backup all of your files because in order to install XP you will need to wipe the hard drive for a fresh NTFS filesystem.
No matter what you do though, you will want to get some sort of external hard drive to backup your hard drive onto. This will cost you another hundred dollars or so.
And of course your computer is going to have five years of built up lint in the fans and in the power box, etc. Doesn’t support DVDs, etc.
So at minimum $500 + $100, but that’s to get yourself a computer that is still going to be half out of date and dying, and potentially having to buy more simply because XP might require a bigger hard drive, or your new mother board needs more power than the power box in your current computer is spitting out.
All in all, if you’ve got all the external bits, buy a whole new “box” (the technical term for the sucker that contains the mother board, hard drive, and everything. It is not a CPU.) Mac Mini does that just fine. You can probably get a preinstalled Windows box for the same price, and it will start working right away with any USB devices you have. You may be SOL on your printers, depending on how old they are and whether the manufacturer felt it was worth making a driver for XP for such an old piece of hardware. But you’ve getter better odds on XP than Mac probably.
Either way, you need to get a USB external hard drive and backup your harddrive. After that, look up your printers on the makers’ websites to verify that they have drivers for XP and/or OS X. Whichever has the most is probably your winner. If all your printers are fully supported for both OSs, then yeah Apple will probably be more user friendly and look prettier. If you have any doubts about whether you can plug anything into the machine or not, you’re going to always have better odds with Windows.
I don’t think they are any more intuitive than Windows. Certainly there are differences that will make it more difficult for him (her) to go to an Mac than to another Windows machine.
That 1-button mouse can be a real problem to get used to.
Bob
Stores:
First, like AHunter3, I’d also suggest walking into an “Apple Store” (not just any Apple reseller, but an actual Apple Store) just to see and play around with all the different types of Macs they have. You don’t have to buy from them, but they’re well-equipped with working demo units and probably have knowledgeable staff if you have any questions.
Fry’s Electronics – if you have them in your area – are also authorized Mac retailers. They’re one of the few big computer chains that sell Macs.
When you’re ready to buy, Amazon.com sometimes offers good deals on Macs (especially newer models like the MacBook Pros). They have their own mail-in rebates that few other stores can offer; they also offer free shipping and may not charge tax depending on your state. Their customer service is also exceptional.
If you want to buy used instead of new, another choice aside from eBay might be Craigslist.org. They specialize in local in-area sales, meaning you can usually meet with the person and see the computer for yourself before buying. On the plus side, this means no shipping charge and no non-delivery worries; on the other hand, it also means cash/check-only transactions and (usually) no guarantees of any sort – so make sure the unit is working before you buy it.
Different Macs:
As for which Mac to buy… do you really need the “most powerful” Apple? The best Apple computers go for thousands and thousands of dollars, but very few kinds of people need them. It’d be, IMO, a huge waste of money to go for the highest-end systems unless you actually plan to be using all that horsepower. The Mini is much cheaper and is a good choice for general Internet/office usage – especially if you already have a keyboard, monitor, and mouse.
OSX vs Windows XP:
Windows XP is definitely a dramatic improvement over Windows Me, but it’s still not perfect. Coupled with Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, it’s still very vulnerable to spyware, worms and other viruses. The Mac is much safer in this regard (at least up to now) and you probably won’t have as many worries.
If you don’t have any Windows programs you care to run, if you don’t mind getting used to another operating system and if the slightly higher price is OK with you… Macs would be a good choice.
Oh, and FYI… “CPU” isn’t exactly the correct term for “just the computer part”. The CPU refers specifically to the central processing unit, which is only one portion of the computer box thing. I’m not trying to be anal – I’m only saying this because some people might misunderstand when you ask for a CPU and think you only want the processor, which you don’t. This isn’t so bad in the Mac world where most systems are sold as complete systems, but if you ask for a “CPU” in some PC stores, you might end up with just a little CPU chip and not the rest of the computer. You want the whole 'puter, just minus the monitor and such. Other terms for this might be “box” or “tower” (as in “PowerPC G4 tower only”), but neither are really 100% accurate so it’s probably best to just say the full “computer with no monitor, keyboard, mouse or speakers” phrase – it’s cumbersome but clearer.
InvisibleWombat and rjung:
How detailed are those books? Are they written more for a general audience or for techies? I’m considering switching to a Mac myself, but I’d like a book that covers a bit more than the bare basics.
Yeah there are differences, but you can plug in any regular 2+ button USB mouse and use it just fine.
That is, of course, only if you were being serious 
I own both Switching to the Mac and Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. I’d say both are written for intelligent people unfamiliar with Macs. The advantage to Switching is that it assumes you know what you’re doing on a Windows machine. The “Where did it go?” section explains that if you are used to doing X on Windows, then you’ll need to do Y on OSX. It saved me a huge amount of time figuring out where to find things.
Not necessarily. I didn’t get an extra external hard drive with my Mac Mini because:
(a) My Mac Mini came with a DVD burner, so I can save all of the critical stuff that changes regularly on a CD or DVD - my music collection is the only thing that won’t fit on one DVD. If ombre3 isn’t using the computer for music or video, then it’s likely that a single DVD will hold everything that needs to be backed up.
(b) The networking is excellent. I can use unused space on my wife’s computer and my son’s computer for backup–and they can use unused space on mine.
(c) If you want offsite backup, .Mac (dot-mac) is available for a monthly fee
(d) My iPod has about 8 Gb of space I’m not using for music right now, so I back up important files from the Mac on the iPod (I can then copy them to my computer at work to create an offsite backup, too).
So, no, your bold-print unequivocal flat-out statement that ombre3 will have to buy an external hard drive just ain’t true. There are lots of options.
One of which is to stick the drive from the old WinME box into an external-drive chassis and use that. Thus giving easy access to all the old files that were used under Windows.
Yeah, but how is he supposed to get all his files over to the new machine? You can’t pop a new hard drive into a Mac I don’t believe–and even if you can, it may be NTFS. Either way, If you’re going to be doing a full move to a new box, you want to do a full backup first.
(I mean, maaaaaybe you could use a cross cable and figure out how to network data over but…)
And of course I reply without reading the full post first…
(a) It’s doubtful a dying five year old computer has a DVD burner in it
(b) He doesn’t know a CPU from a box, I’m doubting he has a home network set up. Even among those who do, most don’t.
© Possible. Of course this is assuming he has a reasonable internet connection, working credit card, and such. (And having the physical copy is always nice.)
(d) iPod is an external USB drive.
I just checked, and it looks like ME is probably running FAT32, so yeah if he gets something that can plug it into the Mac he’s probably safe to go.
Never seen that. Cool.
Windows ME, in my opinion, was flaky and buggy right out of the box; 98SE was better, even though ME was based on it. All the bells and whistles they tried to strap onto it made it unstable.
If you have no particular dependence on any Windows-only application that has no direct replacement in other OSes (I’m thinking about things like MS Access, which has no precise equivalent outside of Windows, although there are obviously many, and better, database apps), anyway… I’m going to suggest that you Install Ubuntu Linux on your existing hardware; if it runs ME OK, it should run Ubuntu OK, and you’ll get a stable operating system with browser, email client, office apps, instant messaging and graphics editor bundled in the default installation, for zero cost.
And Ubuntu is specially tailored for ‘human’ use; no command-line fiddling necessary at all. Try it; if you don’t like it, you still have the option to splash out on a Mac Mini, which would be my next suggestion if you want a computer that just works. Back up your documents first.
If you’re going to use Ubuntu, I think you should try the LiveCD version first. The LiveCD lets you demo the entire operating system by putting in a CD-ROM and restarting your computer. Take it out, restart again, and you’ll have Windows back just the way it was.
The Live CD is available in the free CD kit (both the LiveCD and regular installation CD are included in the bundle). The website is currently experiencing problems, but you can usually order a free CD package from here.
This way, you can make sure that 1. all your hardware works with Linux (be sure to test the web browser, media player, and any other program you think you’d use) and 2. that you like (or can get used to) the Ubuntu interface.
Linux has improved over the years, but it can still be somewhat difficult compared to a preinstalled/preconfigured Windows environment and even more so compared to an integrated Mac setup*. The last thing you want to be stuck with, for example, is a driverless network card and no way to go online or get help.
*Linux can also work very well if it came preinstalled on a computer or if it’s set up by somebody familiar with it, but it doesn’t always play nice on every system. It SHOULD be fine, but better safe than sorry, right?
I haven’t tried Ubuntu, but if you’re trying to hook up three printers to your computer (that may be five years old) I really don’t trust that I would be able to find a driver that compiles against whatever kernel version it will be running on.
I would expand that a little bit: never assume that any particular printer will have a driver for linux, because it probably doesn’t. At least, that’s been my experience, though mainly with Lexmark printers.
Or: If you have any sort of peripheral device at all (aside from keyboard and mouse), don’t assume it works in linux. You’ll set yourself up for disappointment. That’s the main reason I’m getting out of the linux game - I was tired of trying to get devices to work, and especially tired of trying to get devices to work only to fail. Printers, modems, wireless cards, integrated video … ugh.
So, to the OP: don’t worry about Linux. Once you get a new machine try a live CD of Ubuntu or Mepis or something, as it won’t hurt, but bear in mind: a home desktop linux user is in general a sort of masochist that you’re probably not.
I would agree with you in general terms about Linux, however, my experience of Ubuntu has been a wholly positive one; if I was asked to provide a low-maintenance computer for web browsing, email, instant messaging and word processing, for a user with little previous experience of Windows, I’d give them a machine with Ubuntu on it, and I’m normally a Windows kind of guy.
In my limited experience, A Linux installation that works properly is more likely to still be working properly in twelve months’ time than a Windows installation.