Well if you can't maintain it for her she can use 3rd party like disk warrior and Mac janitor.

Heh. I go there enough. I think I can manage it for them

In my everyday life, I use an iBook G3 600 MHz and a Pentium IV Celeron at 2 GHz. The first of them has Mac OS X Jaguar and the PC has an up-to-date version of Windows XP Home.

It is pointless and needless to say, the Celeron is much faster than the G3. But how much? Is it proportionally MUCH faster?. Not really.

As I mentioned, I use both on my everyday. I've been a PC user for my entire life (that includes Linux, not only Windows, and yes, many long time ago I used a Spectrum, not a PC) and a Mac user for the past 2 years.

The most CPU intensive tasks I use are those related to MPEG processing and post-processing. I also do some gaming with both, my Mac and my PC. The first of the tasks is very descriptive as it shows very clearly how fast a computer can be compared to another in terms of yield. However, it is very much to take in account which MPEG coder I'm using, since some are better than others. ffMEPG is an open source quite slow coder ported from Linux to Mac OS X. TMPEG is possibly the fastest MPEG encoder for the Windows platform. Comparingly, TMPEG takes about 2,5 less time to process and AVI to MPEG file than the G3. That is certainly not proportional to the processor speeds (it is still fast, anyhow). That shows in some way that G3 processors are indeed very fast.

On the other hand, gaming is also surprising with my Apple. I play games that regard my G3 as the minimal requirements, and though they don't run smooth, the run ok, at a playable rate. If you try to play a nowadays game with a PC that just meets the minimal requirements, make sure it will 99% be unplayable.

But displacing those facts, which only show that Apple processors are good (but not necessarily better than x86 processors) I'll tell you why I find using an Apple stimulating despite the price.

For the past 2 years I needn't to reformat or reinstall none of my software for anything. Due to OS architecture, things such as spyware and adware are unlikely to happen (no, not because there's less Mac software, though that also helps). Mac OS X hangs, of course, but (I swear) about 1/20th less times than a Windows XP based PC. Overmore, it is very very rare that when an application hangs on your OS X, it provokes a full system crash. It is SO good to work with such an operating system, that even if G3/G4/G5 were slower than PC (which many of them are, by the way), it is still worth to work with them since you don't have to be pressing the reset button every five minutes.

This is the point of view of an everyday Mac/PC user.

Please forgive my spelling/grammar mistakes. I'm not an English native speaker.

Very ineresting post!

About the games thing, games dont RUN at all on macs Its not that they are bad at running them, they would be fine, its the fact that almost no games are designed for macs.

Little games are made for Mac. That, I agree. Yet, the Mac market is lucky in one matter: often games that are ported to the Mac platform are best sellers. So usually you can get the best games for the Mac platform. The bad thingy is that they always come later, once Aspyr or MacSoft ensure that they're gonna make money (by the way, Aspyr and MacSoft ar possibly the biggest game developers for Macs).

You can find Max Payne, Warcraft, Quake III, Medal of Honor, No One Lives for Ever and so many other hits in the Mac platform. It's just a matter of patience to see them released (yes, these games I mentioned are quite old already). To see upcoming and/or just released projects, just check the websites of the software developers I just mentioned, or try visiting the website Inside Mac Games (www.insidemacgames.com) to get a rough overview of what's going on in the Mac gaming world. Don't get tricked by webs such as CNET or GameSpot, which virtually ignore Mac reviews as if this platform didn't exist.

It is Linux the one that has virtually no games (with all my respect to Linux which, as well as the Mac platform, was not designed specifically to play).

Thats the thing. It takes so long to get them out.

Do not kid yourself either, do not think macs are gaming comps, they are not. Most gamers WANT to play the latest and greatest games, not wait a few years for them to come out. I dont want to wait for max payne 2, I got it ASAP.

Well it is not years what they take. But the may be one year back, that's true. And I also agree with you that we - as human beings - like and WANT to play that very latest game, don't we? uh...

And of course not, Macs are not intended for gaming. But nonetheless I enjoy a lot playing with my Mac.

Anyhow, try checking the web I mentioned www.insidemacgames.com, and you'll see that, though delayed, such delay is - in my humble opinion - endurable.

Nah man. These games are like crack. You just cant wait

Doh! I can :P ! Since I don't really have much time to play... (I wish I did)

I beat max payne 2 in, ummm, I think about 5 hours. Maybe a bit less. It doesnt take too too long

If you got payed for playing you could live like a Maharaha

I'd expect that everyone here knows the xBox2 is going to use the 970. With the proper app, I think you should be able to run xBox games on a G5 right? Or for that matter any PPC.

I am purchasing an iBook this summer. Macs are great. They just aren't meant for gaming. Of course, a 12 inch laptop screen isn't really meant for gaming anyway, so im not missing much by getting a Mac. Especially since I am not a serious gamer. I play games now and then, but not more than an hour every day or two.

I hear people sayin macs arent as fast as a pc wtf is that if ur gonna pay 2000 that thing better be so fast that that.... lol