[APBeta] ... any ideas on the best way to get started with a mac?

[ronald ridge]

Good afternoon all, I am a long time windows user, a linux user of about 
three years and do some database administration into a windows server 
environment using remote desktop.  I have both windows 7 and linux mint 
debian edition machines installed.  I have never had a mac of any 
variety but am considering adding a mac alongside the windows and linux 
machines.  Best guess is that I would want the mac to do the normal 
internet browsing and email stuff as well as drive the telescope through 
astroplanner and I hope that I might also be able to remote desktop into 
the windows server environment.

Would want sufficient horsepower in the mac that I would feel that the 
mac performance was better than the windows performance while maybe not 
being quite as responsive as the linux machines.  I haven't the 
slightest idea of where to start figuring out what the range of macs 
might be that would not cost too much while being sufficiently powerful 
and also portable enough to carry outside to use with the telescope.  I 
also have no idea about which version of the operating system I should 
have as a minimum.

I think that a lightweight monitor with the mac mini might work in terms 
of portability and would even consider the imac as it apparently weighs 
somewhere in the 20 to 25 pound range.  A laptop would be the right 
choice and Apple touts their "new"  machines as being "twice as 
powerful" as the predecessor machines but that means nothing to me 
because I have no understanding of the predecessor machines.  And the 
new laptops are pretty pricey.  There appear to be very few places to 
buy a new mac so there seems not to be a very wide range of pricing 
available.

I know there are several, several mac users among the group and would 
appreciate hearing your thoughts on how I might go about figuring this 
out.  There may also be some websites that would have information on the 
topic but I have not found any that have been helpful to me regarding 
how a windows or linux user might approach this.

Thank you very much!

	~~~   ~~~
	Ron Ridge
	~~~   ~~~
	Send to:ridgerunner.007 at gmail.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.astroplanner.net/pipermail/apbeta-astroplanner.net/attachments/20120210/a9f02679/attachment-0002.htm>