Computer OS question

[VeloVT]

I'm no expert, but I agree with staying away from Vista. If you get a MAC, which is what I have, you will need a partition running Windows in order to install/run any of the software you are using on your old PC. MAC won't run any of it and chances are you won't be able to find a version of your software made for the MAC. If you're on a budget, probably Dell has the best prices for what you get and if your tech friend should be able to set you up similar to your current P.

I think Mac is still behind the curve in compatibility with training software (Garmin, Polar etc), but it's just not true that "chances are you won't be able to find (most of the software you run on your PC) for Mac." Most (though not all) popular software is available for Mac. I have MS Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc) on my Mac, I know you can get Adobe suite for Mac, you can get Internet Explorer for mac (although I can't imagine why you'd want to use IE if you could use Firefox, Opera etc instead). I'm sure there are some technical/specialized software packages that aren't available in Mac versions, but that's what boot camp/parallels/etc are for -- and if you're mostly just puttering around with word processing and email/web, then it's not likely to be an issue.

Edit: look -- Garmin finally has Mac software: http://www8.garmin.com/macosx/. So no need to partition/run dual OSs for that.