guenievre

I may be turning to the dark side.

Or possibly the light side, depending on who you ask.

I haven't actually owned my *own* computer for years, as the work laptop I'm typing this on had many advantages. ( I have about as much control over it as I would one I owned, and it gets upgraded on a reasonably consistent basis, and of course the ever important, I didn't have to pay for it portion of the experience. )

But...See, y'all know I'm in love with my iPhone. It practically makes me breakfast in bed. More on this later.

I've realized that I rather like having a desktop computer these days - most of the functions formerly served by having a laptop at home, like reading my email from the comfort of my couch or bed, are now served by my phone, so when I want a "computer" computer these days, I've been using Pandora. The catch here is that Pandora is Nick's baby - he built her from scratch, and he's not entirely happy with me having sort of appropriated her for my own use.

Thus me acquiring my own desktop to share my desk with my sewing machine would be a Good Thing. And here we come to the Dark Side.

Did I mention my love for my iPhone?

I'm pondering a Mac. Specifically a cute little Mac Mini, ordered from Amazon bundled with the extra memory (soucyn says he can put it in fairly easily, and it's well under half the cost of ordering it from Apple with the memory pre-installed. ($60 vs $150 seems a nobrainer there). That, and a 20" HP monitor (is it sad that I can get THAT cheaper through Amazon than through work??!?!) and I should be all set, though I haven't decided on new keyboard/mouse yet.

I'm sort of conflicted over this though. I've never owned a Mac, but they appeal to me. That said, I'm afraid I'll hate it and will have paid a significant premium over getting a Windows box - for instance, I could get an HP desktop with better specs and the same monitor as the one I'm looking at, for the price of *just* the Mini without any peripherals or even the memory upgrade. So that tradeoff for a user experience that I'm not *absolutely* sure I'll love is... scary.

And yet... I *adore* my phone. And I wouldn't have believed that the user experience there would make it nearly as cool as it is - certainly the Helio phone I had *before* my iPhone had similar specs, better in some areas, and yet it sucked. So maybe it's worth it?

Oh, and of course to further complicate things, there are rumors that prices on iMacs are falling soon. So that's a temptation, but not MUCH of one, because even with the price drop, it'd still be outside my budget. Sexier than the Mini and not-matching monitor, though.

So... reassure me? talk me out of it and into something else? Either way...