Hello Halfass Readers, all tens of you!

I’d like to address this to the portion of my readership who happen to be Mac nerds. I am seeking Mac buying advice as it is time to replace the decrepit 20” G4 iMac. Although I find its design has remained fresh and it’s the nicest looking of all the iMacs, it has far outlived its useful life. Our hours are not spent giddily editing home videos or manipulating our favorite snaps, but staring at the beach ball and cursing under our breath while Maple does the “fucking computer” dance.

First, a little history. I took the plunge with this iMac, which was, at the time, the top of the line consumer Mac. From day one, I loved it. However, when I migrated my music library (at the time 160GB, I have since trimmed it down to 120GB) and my photo library (at the time 4 GB, now over 20 GB), the computer—even brand new—ground to a halt. In short, I’ve been bumping my head against the performance limitations of this Mac since I took it out of the box.

Partially to blame for my lagging performance, I think, is the G4 processor. I bought at a time when Apple was having a hard time getting to the G5 (it seemed) and IBM was having a hard time getting any more performance out of either the G4 or G5 on their consumer-level hardware. Whatever, that’s my armchair analysis and I don’t need a bunch of people writing in to tell me the G5 was teh awesome or any of that, please. Bottom line: iMac slow.

So now I’m looking to get a new machine for home use. Our use pattern is as follows: our computer is our everything. We don’t have telephone (we use Skype and mobiles), television (we use YouTube, iTunes and, occasionally, DVDs), or a stereo (we use the computer). Additionally, both my wife and I consume all of our news via the web either via our iPhones or computer. In short: Mac = essential.

As noted above, I have a lot of media. My music collection, now preened and weeded of all the old school P2P & Napster crap, is huge. My photo collection is sizable and growing. I have tapes and tapes full of unedited video I’d like to start hacking through and putting up on my websites. In short, this machine will see a lot of usage.

Which brings me to the question: which Mac should I buy?

For almost a year now, I’ve been assuming I would buy the top-of-the-line iMac. My logic is that the iMac now has an Intel Core 2 Duo or even EXTREME!!!!!! processor and, should I max it out with 4GB of RAM, I’d have a machine that would be zippy. I don’t want to see that insipid little beach ball. I want to rip through video, I want to be able to download iTunes stuff while surfing, importing photos and synching my iPhone. I want .Mac to actually work—oh, wait. Nevermind. Scratch that last one. Even the nicest Mac in the world won’t help that steaming pile of something rank.

Of course I realize that if I were to buy the Mac Pro, at more than twice the total investment because I don’t have a monitor (remember, I rock iMac right now), would be even faster. But is the investment worth it? Would a consumer-level user who, admittedly pushes the edge a bit, get a good cost-to-benefit ratio on the Mac Pro? Also, is the expandability and ability to leverage investment in drives, monitors and other components that could potentially migrate to a new tower case factor machine in the future worth the extra thousands?

On the cost front, we’re probably looking at a difference of $2000 USD between the two machines once fully decked out. That’s a lot of jack that could go towards Time Capsule, external drives, new speaker systems, and innumerable other little technology goodies. We can afford the Mac Pro, but is it a good use of the money?

So, Mac-buying Halfasses, what’s the verdict?