I have chosen a different solution. I used a PC running every version of Windows that has been released - except Vista. I loved Windows 2000 and thought XP was pretty agreeable. Every time I considered buying a new PC I could just not justify the added cost of a Mac. About three years ago I made the switch to Linux. They have really improved the usability and if all you want to do is email some word processing/spreadsheets and browse the web it can work for almost any one. That was not the case when I first switched - it took a lot of tweaking to get all the stuff to work but the systems pretty well do it all automatically now. It is amazing that software of this quality it available at no or little cost. I suppose it is not for everyone but I sure like it.