Potential Mac Switcher -advice?

[marliz]

I'm overwhelmed by all the responses. I'm past the time when I can build, which is why I hope to find a local recommended person. I've heard of Alienware and that is worth checking out.

Before the Mac I bought a Velocity Micro. The company was small and gave direct support. In the three years I had the (well built) machine, they grew and outsourced support. Which meant no support. Windows quite activating and a call to Microsoft ended up blaming the software. I had to either pay them to fix it or ask the pc seller to help. No help from them. Bad experience. One of the main reasons I switched to the Mac was being "taken" by Microsoft who wouldn't fix their own activation problem. Sure hope it's better now!

I've had Dells and they were good, but my last machine had the rip off card (can't remember the name of the device now) that was supposed to enable downloading my home videos and let me edit. (supplied by Pinnacle Studio) Neither would support it. A year or so later they started giving refunds or some kind of satisfaction to those ripped off. Too late for me. and pretty sad that they kept selling the thing. It was my last Dell.

I guess Alienware has been around quite awhile. Hopefully it would work out better.

I'd forgotten why I switched until you reminded me. Yikes!

Thanks for all the replies.

 

[whs]

My Dell Inspiron 530 does not even have bays for the HDDs. They are bolted to the frame. And I had to fix my SSD with Velcro to the bottom of the CD/DVD reader. In my cheap HP box, I have extra disk bays and was able to properly install the SSD.

 

[marliz]

An update on switching to Windows to Mac

You were so helful I wanted to let you know how the switch is progressing. (I do have one question: any recommendations for a good, clearly written book to help me transition back to Win 7?)

Adobe has sent out the Windows disk. They cross-graded with no problem.

I picked up a Sony laptop from Sam's club, thinking it might do for internet while traveling. But it has no firewire and is too slow, so will be returning it

My Mac is busy as an app I already had, "iPartition" is changin one of my disks to Windows compatable. I can't touch it or the disk will be mesed up.

The mac has still been a nightmare. My clones are saving the day/s. Once I had to start it up using the firewire target feature, connecting it to my little Macbook.

When I finally get all the drives formatted for Windows (iPartition has been good for redoing partition schemes and not destroying data on the drive though it takes a long time). I'll wipe the system disk and install a fresh copy of snow leopard. I think I'll leave one 700 GB drive in there and it has a lot of added ram and an e-sata card (plus an internal fast usb card with four extra slots). Still room for a couple more cards. One thing about that machine was it's expandability!

I should be able to sell it locally through the classifieds or Craig's list. Don't want to go the ebay route in case it got messed up in transit (or the buyer messed it up and wanted a refund.) Anyhow, when it's time, I'll find out what similar machines go for used.

I am looking at an HP business machine. (The x800 maybe, can't find the exact name because it's on the Mac in a dozen text files with reviews and I'm not touching that machine until the new system scheme is in place. The price of the HP varies widely. from around $1800.00 up, I think, so I will need to be sure I get what I need but not a lot more than I need. $10,000 is a bit much for this hobbiest! The inside looks almost maclike in neatness (as one reviewer put it).

I haven't settled on it for sure, but don't want to be without my Photoshop fix for too long.

A long post but I did want you to know how it's going if you are interested in reading that far. And who knows, it might help someone else.

Thank you many times over for your help on my prior post.

 

[Barman58]

Thanks for keeping us informed