I have 5 computers (including my laptop and Jornada) but am thinking about switching to the MacBook. My son has to use one for school, and I'm tired of not being able to help when he asks questions. I probably wouldn't do this without the option of the dual boot or parallel method for retaining Windows, though! I'm very nervous and feel like I still need convincing. Off to the Apple store to have a little look-see in a minute...

Apple has released Boot Camp, which allows you to dual boot into either Mac OS X or Windows XP or Vista.

In addition, there is Parallels Desktop, which allows you to run Windows inside Mac OS X through virtualization.

Both run Windows natively, but Parallels can't take advantage of 3D Graphics acceleration, so Boot Camp is your best bet if you want to play games.

And mousepod, Crucial is great, but I can't stand their prices. I just got a gig of additional RAM for our iMac G5...Crucial quoted me at $150, but Datamem (the place I linked to earlier) sold it to me for $100 :)

Disneyfan, point well taken. I will certainly check Datamem next time.

By the way, there's a program on the horizon called Crossover, which will allow Intel Mac users to use Windows apps without having Windows at all! Yay!

Crossover looks like a great product, but according to the web site, it says you can only run certain applications, which kinda sucks.

Hopefully the Steve Jobs Keynote on Monday at WWDC will introduce Leopard with Virtualization.

Also recently released is TransGaming's Cider, which will allow Windows programs to access the Win32 APIs from inside OS X.

Or instead of on the horizon, try Cider now. :D

Well, I just discovered that through my new job, we get discounts at Dell. my roomie's new 1500 laptop can be mine for about 900........let's talk temptation! Fortunately, no spare money to play with right now.

Just make sure it doesn't explode ;)

Wise counsel! But, my Dell desktop has never caused me one iota of trouble. So, who knows? Right now, anything new is pure fantasy, truly, no money to play with!:(

Does yours make a rattling sound? I have an old Dimension 8250 that uses some weird fan attatched to a huge green plastic dam. Whenever I turn it on, it rattles like crazy. I've tried everything...kicking, duct taping the entire thing to the case, cleaning the fan...nothing works. I can't even replace the damn thing because of the way its attatched to the green dam thing. Apparently a lot of people with my model have the same problem...

Yeah, the fan rattles. I cured it by proping the front end of the tower up about an inch. Believe it or not, it worked. Mine is a Dell 8200 and other than that minor annoyance, has given me no troubles. Nothing like my old HP Pavillion.