El, as to the software, you could not be in a bigger predicament than mine: I am using a 3-year old Mac clone at home, which is actually working fine and is faster on MS products that present systems that I use at work, which are 6 months old.
I saw your note regarding a new system and there are two schools of thought there. I suspect that most of your work is on the internet, so let me suggest the following.
You need a high-speed connection, either through DSL, cable, or satellite (the speed decreases accordingly, going from 1500 kbps to 400 kbps download speeds, which is faster than any 56kbps modem which typically operates no faster than 48kbps.
From a processor perspective, Apple's G3 and G4 systems (especially the G4) are nearly 3 times faster than typcial P-IIIs. G4s operate at up to 3 gigaflops/sec using words of 128 bits at a time. That is overkill, though and you do not want to learn a new operating system, probably. Although you can use software to have both Windows and Macintosh operating systems running transparently, concurrently, and true multiprocessing, with OS-X. You could get a wireless networking card for about $100 bucks too and surf at DSL speeds.
Given that you will probably want to get a system based on a Windows operating system, focus on RAM and the bus speed. Browsers are getting to be cumbersome and the I/O operations can get cumbersome. If you travel a lot and size is an issue, look at the Sony VAIO's, not cheap but pretty slick, very thin and light, and plenty powerful around 700MHz.
Good luck. I use both systems, one at home and one at work, so I like the flexibility.
If I were |
