I was convinced quite a while ago. My problem had always been the entry fee was a bit high. So I mistakenly thought. When you look close at what you get for the money and compare them to PC's, the Macs do indeed offer quite a lot of bang for the buck. And the prices HAVE come down while the quality has gone up. THAT doesn't often happen anymore.
And my wife? She was reluctant as all hell at the idea of replacing her dead P4 XP Pro machine with a Mac. People were telling her they were hard to use and there wasn't any software for them, I just kept telling her ignorance knows no bounds. Thursday I took her to an Apple Store and when the first sales kid approached us and asked if he could help I told him I wanted to walk out with an iMac and that he needed to sell it to
*her* so I could. 2 hours later (they were busy and we had to wait almost an hour for them to swap out the 2GB RAM for the 4GB I wanted) we did just that. :)And I agree with you 100% about the CAD/CAM software, If it weren't for that I'd have absolutely no reason at all to keep a PC around for desktop computing once I have my own Mac.
We got 1 Mac so far. 20" iMac / 2.66GHz / 4GB RAM / 320GB disk / 256MB Radeon video / 320GB external FireWire drive.
When I get a Mac it'll be the same thing but with 512MB video if available. The 24" is too big for me, I don't even like doing CAD/CAM on anything bigger than 20" wide screen LCD monitors now, resolutions can be cranked so high these days massive monitors aren't needed anymore.
When the time comes, I'm not cracking open an iMac, it looks like doing
*anything* to the hardware is a major pita. I would rather take them to the Apple Store and pay to have the work done. That is until I can get my hands on one I don't give a shit about breaking. :)