switching from software to hardware, considering switching from pc to mac.... advise please

[TEEJ]

yeah so i run 5 druids... feral on laptop with 4 balance/resto hybrids split up on a big widescreen i bought for my alienware pc. keyclone works great. macros are easy to plan. thinking of 5boxing city of villians just cause it's more of an instant fun than wow's huge time investment fun.

i am about to start the process to switch to be a hardware boxing, and was thinking of getting 4 imacs with the vertical 2 monitor stand things that suv/vynd use. perhaps even get 5 imacs and burn/sell my pc and laptop... or just use them to browse the net and such. the reason i want to switch to mac is i hate windows. all the background programs that slow me down that i can't stop...... i dont wana reformat every few months. i'm good at using but i suck at fixing. i also hate having to reboot every time something crashes that i wasn't even using.

the imacs are 2.66 ghz dual core, 2 gigs ram, 256 meg vid card... with everything possible built in. i already got a kvm that i'll hook up 1 master keyboard to all the imacs, while still having the small individual keyboards set up on the desk space with trackballs for each comp. 1400$ per imac. i just read suvega's post about being able to make a pc for 600 including the monitor with stuff from newegg... but i'm not technically inclined enough to build/install. 6k-8k for 4-5 imacs with kvm, stands, and trackballs and such seems like a price i'm willing to pay for convenience and sanity. but does anyone advise against mac? i have buddies that use macs booted up in windows, and it just seems like macs run pc stuff better than pcs do.

i'm in the navy for 9 more months... with zero debt, money in the bank, and a house about to sell. so i have the cash, but i can't decide if i should just save it or kill time till i can leave washington... what do you think?

[Eteocles]

Macs suck. Nuff said. ESPECIALLY the imacs, if I recall right they're mac-only, no PC parts/windows installability.

[TEEJ]

you can install windows on macs. when you press the boot up button, there are 2 options, boot up in the mac OS, or windows. actually recently the fastest notebook windows vista speed was clocked by the macbook pro... stock, no special upgrades...

i definitely wouldn't be in the market to upgrade whether i go pc or mac. i believe in getting something more than good enough, and living with it for a few years. i don't see myself moving to a more demanding game graphically, multiboxingwise anyway. whether i get a pc or mac it'd be 2.something Ghz dual core, 2 gigs of ram, 256 or bigger video card... and everything else stock. but i really suck at building/installing/repairing comps, and i really hate unstable windows when run on a pc.

i used to be anti-mac but my friends let me use theirs and it's pretty badass, although more expensive. but money isn't an issue, i'm the bank. sanity is priceless.

[Gadzooks]

Macs suck. Nuff said. ESPECIALLY the imacs, if I recall right they're mac-only, no PC parts/windows installability.

Oh please. Spare us the Wintel Snobbery™. The current line-up of Macs are great machines, and I've heard every argument under the sun since the early 90's why Apple and their products "suck". When Jobs left the company, yes, they sucked. Now? Please.

The new iMacs run Windows in BootCamp (native) or in Parallels (emulation) just fine. All current Macs do, from the Mac Mini to the Towers and MacBook Pros. Best of both worlds, really, you can't complain. I run Vista and XP on my Mini, and it's just fine. I prefer the Mac OS, as I use it more professionally (I get paid to use Photoshop), but both platforms have their strengths, weaknesses, and it all boils down to what you can *do* with a computer. Anyone can buy a computer, show me what you can *do*, not sit there and act like a 11 year old fighting about which Power Ranger is better. That doesn't impress me.

As for parts, Macs have used PC parts for years, the only things right now that are Mac specific are the motherboards, video cards (and that's a lot better than it used to be), and cases.

As for the OP, I would buy one dual quad core Xeon Intel Mac tower, and put two decent video cards in - the iMac has a slower system bus, and you can't put as much ram in - and you'll need a LOT - same as if you ran Windows. The iMac is simply not designed to do the kind of thing you are going to be doing, I would worry about heat a LOT with an iMac - the towers are well ventilated (ever look inside a Mac tower? It's gorgeous). Also, with the tower, you have much better choices for video cards (PCI-X). A dual quad core Mac is going to be one hell of a machine for a while, they are insanely fast. One piece of advice -do not buy ram, harddrives or video cards from Apple - buy the base machine and upgrade it yourself much cheaper through NewEgg or CDW. The iMacs are nice, but they're really not built for that kind of heavy lifting you're planning on doing. If you buy 2 iMacs, you pretty much are spending the same amount.

If you get separate cpus add in the cost of the KVM/multi-caster, because there is no software solution I can find to broadcast keyboard commands over TC/IP or Ethernet. I am going to try a D-Link DBT-120 Bluetooth dongle later this week or next to see if I can pair one keyboard to all of my Macs (Dual G5 Tower, 17" Powerbook, Intel Mini) for 3-boxing or more, which might be a cost-effective solution until I can afford a multi-caster. There are a couple of cool free apps for screen and mouse sharing, tho - Synergy works great on my G5 and Mini. If you run 4 copies on a tower, one copy of CloneKeys is all you need, it works great.

I run 3 copies of Wow just fine on a dual G5 with a Radeon 9800 video card and 23" HD Cinema, 4.5 gigs of ram. A new dual XEON quad core? Forget about it. If I had the cash right now, I'd have one.

Plus, it'll run all of your Windows stuff.

If I had the room/money, I'd set up a Windows based system with mini ATX boxen for a 5-box setup in a heartbeat, so I could try multi-boxing in other games - not all of us Mac users are snobs.

[TEEJ]

yeah i already bought a kvm. i already 5box fine with 2 pcs, but i want to use 5 pcs.... the 1 pc 4 imac (or 5 imac) idea i had i'd just be running wow/cityofvillians only on the imacs. should run fast. 2 Ghz, 2GB ram, 256MB vid 20''... (1400$ all inclusive)

the mac pro would be superior, but all i need it to do is run 1 instance of the game per imac. and the towers are way more expensive than imacs, since i'm insistent on 5 computers instead of 2. i guess 4-5 mac laptops would work, i'll have to look at the prices/videocards. but for my purposes, imacs seem ideal.

do you really think that an imac running 1 copy of wow or city of villians and nothing else would have heat problems?

i'm thinking now of 1 mac pro and 4 imacs for the alts... good idea? bad idea?

[Groovy]

IMacs are great, but they do have heat issues. I would look into getting Mac Pro's. Also I would wait for apple to adopt Nvidia cards, ATI's drivers are always problematic, great cards, shitty drivers. OSX Leopard if you can, else bootcamp into windows XP. Mac Minis are pretty good to, but like the IMac they have heating issues.

[TEEJ]

yeah the mac pro's are way better but 2799 apiece adds up fast. 1400 apiece times 4 i can see myself spending, but not 2799 apiece times 4 or 5 plus 4-500 for monitors and whatever else doesnt come with it.

6500$ is a hobby.

15000$ is a good downpayment on a new car/house.

if imacs at 1400$ can't handle wow/cityofvillians, i better stick with cheap PCs and hope they don't die on me.

[TEEJ]

oh yeah... all new macs come with osx leopard

[Groovy]

Speaking of CoV what are you going to multibox in there? I'm intreeged.

[TEEJ]

x/rad corruptors have a ton of synergy.

i was thinking rad/rad or fire/rad, but issue 12 coming out makes me want to be elec/rad (new powerset for corruptors). short circuit and other electric attacks can drain all the end from an arch villian/hero or huge monster in <11 seconds with a team of 8 electric drainers. and accelerate metabolism gives insane recharge/end recovery/speed, which stacks. and if i ever wanted to pvp, i could drain end like crazy and stack the elec hold 4 times with 1 keypress.

also i'm a big fan of having some sort of tank even though its not really needed with all the /rad debuffs.

so... i'm thinknig elec/elec brute on my alienware with 4 elec/rad corruptor alts linked together on imacs. deciding power pools is the hard part... other than naming the toons.

i'd control my brute mainly, reach up and press numbers on the keyboard that controls all 4 corruptors via a kvm... with corruptors mainly on autofollow. aoe ball lightningx4, pbaoe short circuitx4, lightningx4 on bosses. debuff aoe in big fights. aoe healingx4.

also boxing on cox you rack a ton of prestige up, which would really help my villian group get their base pimped out. not sure yet what server i'll play on yet, i mainly used to play city of heroes on infinity but corruptors are the bee's knees. probly justice or virtue since i saw a couple cool vg recruitment threads on those servers in the cov forums.

if any of you guys are heavily into city of villians let me know and i'll roll where you are. always fun to rock it with other boxers.