A family computer for home

Posted by: zorba on 28 March 2007

Please help me make a more informed decision.

I use a pc at work for email, basic word and spreadsheet documents. I would class myself as a beginner.

I need a computer at home for myself and family. I would like it to do;

1. Homework. Finnish off letters and spreadsheets from work.
2. Help myself and family become more computer literate.
3. Be bedroom friendly and double up as a TV.
4. Get into photo + video presentation for family photo's and video.
5. Music server.
6. email and web surfing.

I looked at the imac and it looks a fun and creative machine with photo and film editing software already built in. The music maker looks like fun ( I am thinking of learning to play guitar at 38)my son is 5 and may like what dad is doing and could take up an instrument. Is it true they are reliable,stable and more family friendly?

What does concern me is when my son will be using a computer at school for education it is more than likely to be pc. I use pc and so does everyone else I deal with which may raise compatibility problems if I went for mac.

Is good advice - if you use pc stick with pc, if you use mac stick with mac.

Thanx,
Zorba.
Posted on: 01 April 2007 by garyi
If you purchase an iMac from john Lewis that comes with 2 years warranty.

There was talk of june for release and also September. If a release is imminent they stick a token in the box anyhow to allow you to get a free copy.
Posted on: 03 April 2007 by zorba
Thanx all. I'm nearly there.

Regarding this free NeoOffice download. Does this mean I could save a spreadsheet or word document at work, bring it home finnish it, save it and take it back to work in the morning for use on a pc without having to jiggle around with formats?
Posted on: 03 April 2007 by Guido Fawkes
Yes - just opened a company budget template created in Excel, edited it with NeoOffice Calc and saved it back to Excel. It has some complex macros and formulae and it worked no problem. I often do it.

Please check out this link.

BTW I use Parallels that lets me run other OSs side by side with OSX 10.4.9. I run Amiga OS ('cos I'm a bit mad), Solaris X86 ('cos I need it for work) and Windoze XP ('cos I need it for work) - though not all at the same time. No real problems to report, but I don't play games at all.

I suggested getting a good guarantee because I've had two faults both with the same Apple PowerBook - a screen failure and a DVD SuperDrive failure: I got both fixed under AppleCare and no problems since - a friend had the same issues with same model. Together with colleagues, I have been using Macs for years and we have a couple of hundred of the things in our company: I've only had a few isolated hardware problems, much less than on HP kit which we also use, and Dell kit don't get me started. Sun kit is our most reliable, but not for home computing.

So far, I've never had a problem with an iMac and my parents still use one that came out when OS9 was released.
Posted on: 03 April 2007 by zorba
Thanx ROTF.

I have 3 pc's at work and it was time for one at home. Looking at what it needs to do the iMac looks right for me.

Thanx everyone, much appreciated info.

Regards,
zorba.