LT,
Macs are nice. Wouldn't own one, but they are nice, and if they will do what you want, and that's what you want, I say get one.

I build my own computers, something you can't do with a Mac. I can upgrade and expand my system to meet my needs with a minimal expenditure. You can't do that on a Mac. Yes, you can change the video card, add more RAM, or another hard drive, but you can't select a new motherboard and CPU and toss it in there. Maybe that's a good thing, since all the parts are vetted by Apple, but personally, I like being able to configure my system with the parts I want in it, based on what I'm doing.

Mac updates their OS's much more often than Microsoft does. Sometimes, a program will no longer run on the new OS because of the changes, so you'll have to either not upgrade, reinstall the old OS, or do without the program until the software manufacturer can update. For instance, with Band In A Box, PG Music makes most of their money from PC sales, so their concentration is on PC versions of the software. Macs come second, so while they are trying to maintain parity at the moment, you can bet the PC version gets updated first. If Apple were to make another major change like they did going from OS 9 to OS X, it is possibly you'll be out in the cold on many of your programs. I can't run programs on Windows 7 that were designed for Windows 95, but then again, I don't have any of those any more, either.

Manning, look at the specs on Steve's computer. I'll be very willing to bet large amounts of money that with the video card and two hard drives, he wasn't running a laptop. I will also be willing to wager some cash that a lot of his problems could be traced to the Alesis interface and the drivers for that. We'll never know on that regard for sure, but I would bet it was, especially if the Alesis was a Firewire connection. Apples do firewire audio better than PCs do.

Gary

I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!