Should I, in my situation, switch to a Mac?

the sheep use a pc, the sheep herder uses a mac:)

Huh?

P.S. @ sfrerik: Must be a long answer :-)

As the Magic 8-ball says, “Ask again later.”

Technology changes so fast that it’s difficult to predict what the right decision will be in three years time.

To answer a few of your questions: A Mac should work on your LAN. You ought to be able to plug in almost any USB (or Firewire 400 or Firewire 800) external hard drive or camera. You will need a DVI to VGA adapter to connect your VGA monitor. I have no clue about your PDA, tablet, or remote, but do you really think you’ll be using the same ones three years from now?

sferik is right—you’ll have to re-evaluate in 3 years. Most of your stuff will work, but the PDA, tablet and remote might not. Any specific instructions on how to make it work might or might not be applicable in 3 years.

But don’t feel like you’re stuck. Lots of people switch to Ubuntu Linux and are very happy. You could also switch to Windows XP and perhaps have a less buggy experience.

On the other hand, if you really wanted to, you could sell your Vista computer and buy a Mac. But that seems somewhat excessive

If you bought a Mac today I doubt that your PDA would work properly. I think Wacom tablets work (I used to use one on a Mac, but that was 10 years ago), and almost all cameras work fine with the Mac.

Will almost definitely work out of the box: network, monitor, hard drives, camera

Probably work: tablet

Probably not / could be annoying: PDA, remote

I just checked the Logitech website, and Harmony software is available for mac. Thanks for your list.

i have a wacom intuos3 that works so well with my mac, it might as well be made by apple.

Assuming the Acer runs Windows Mobile it will work; may need to purchase The Missing Sync though.

Wacom works great on Mac; I believe these were originally a Mac product before the drivers were ported to Windows.

All Macs, with the exception of the Pro, come with a remote; I doubt the current OS will be Leopard in 3 years, as it is doubtful that your CRT monitor will live that long; providing it does it is doubtful that you would want to use it 3 years from now.

Vista will be around in 3 years (given Microsoft’s track record for updates) OS X will be around, but will probably be some other big cat.

in all seriousness, the right time to shop for a computer is the time you’re going to be buying. trying to foresee the personal computer market three years in advance is very impractical. could anyone have predicted in 2004 that apple was going into the cellphone business?

glial: It is a TFT :-)

Do it. You’ll never look back.

I know I never have.

CRT is a dying technology I doubt in 3 yrs you will be able to tolerate w/ all of the HD tech out now; all of the advice above is good; all of the reasons you cited are the key points that pc users cite when they end up switching; do more research after Leopard drops and it’ll be a no-brainer!

I changed plan. I’m selling this notebook to my uncle, and for that money, I’m going to but a Mac Mini, and later (in three years) I’m going to buy a Macbook Pro. So, maybe in a week, I will be switched! Yes!

GET A MAC YOU’LL BE HAPPY!!! I am happy with mine!

I now have one :)

The Mac Mini???

iMac Alu

WAT?

iMac Aluminum…

o ok

Not even reading your situation – YES

@bob: My new mac works fine with my old Zire 72.

Mac all the way. You most likely will never run into problems. I have never really run into any compatibily problems and im not talking about BootCamp. The only problems you’ll run into is finding good games.

The computer you use should depend in your goals:

If you want commonality with most PC users – use a PC/Vista
If you want better integration, less malware, slightly higher price, beauty – Choose Mac
If you want to “take the red pill” (in a matrixian sense) – use PC/Linux

I love my MacBook Pro. It’s fast. It just works, so I can work. It fits the description of what you want in your second paragraph.

I don’t know about your hardware, sorry.