[79CamaroDiva]

Macs aren't just for editing, they're great all around computers. Ppl who don't own or use one regularly should point out the pros of pc ownership instead of shouting uninformed "don't need a mac" comments. Just as I'll stay away from the pcs suck argument because I haven't owned one in 8 years.

In general, a mac will run flawlessly and nearly maintenance free for a very long time. I bought my first mac in 2001 when I was starting my freshman year of college. That PowerBook was great to me for 3 years and was still reliable and fast when I sold it to a friend to purchase my next PowerBook in 2004. The one I purchased in 04 I was still using to do very heavy, memory intensive editing with up til about 2 months ago (every njfboa calendar was created on that poor laptop, folder size was a few gigs, to give you an idea what a 5 year old mac can throw around). It stayed top of the line for a long time, even with newer models, it took whatever I threw at it.

Also the argument against viruses; people can say that macs will get viruses some day, but in my 3 macs (bought a desktop in dec) I have never run a single virus program, nor have ever had any virus related problems. I was at two college campuses and travel for work, no problems. However I have read that if you run windows on your mac, you need to run virus software on the windows partition, or it will open it up to infection.

I also think, for your needs, a MacBook pro is probably overkill, but you'll enjoy it nonetheless.