Want To Buy My First Mac... Don't Know What I Need, trying to solve ignorance Options

[impl0dr]

well... i need some major help. i have been making music on my piece of crap pc for a couple of years. it is really slow, so i don't have many options as to what i can run on it. anyway... i'm looking to get serious about the whole music making thing and know that MAC is the way to go. i know some basics of what i want, but don't know enough about macs or making REAL music using REAL equiptment. so... on to what i know i want:

g4 laptop 12" or 15"
-i need a separate hard drive for my music. my wife intends to use this as her computer for her job too.


i know ABOUT firewire, but don't know anything about it. i do know that i can only get firewire 400 on the 12 and 15".


i have some synths, a 12 track mixer, a drum machine that i will adding to (of course) and would like to get to start really using them.


anyway, i don't know what's available as far as specs go or what i want/need to get in order to sucessfully create music.

so, as you can see... i need a lot of help here. i would like to make this purchase sooner than later and really appreciate your time. thanks

[dixiechicken]

I'm not particularly interested in swaying peoples opinions in a "mac vs pc" battle.
If you ask me what I think I have to state what my 10 years experience as sysadmin at our dept tells me.
( some 250 computers mixed environment - 210 pc:s 30:macs & 10 *nix boxes )

I spend on average +40 hours a week supporting the PC:s, less than an hour for the macs,
for the *.nix boxes 5-8 minutes.

I have run just about all desktop os:es there is, on a variety of hardware and Mac OS X is the slowest.
Followed by Win2K, WinXP and Mac OS 8-9 tie for third position.
For speed and stability various *nix distros are in class by themself, windoze & mac os are simply pitiful in these respects.

The belief that various hardware developments - will result in any drastic speed-advances for common users - is plain bullshit.
( sorry - this is not meant to be a personal flaming ) This hasnt happened yet, it very likely never will.

Whatever hardware resources are avaliable will be used to the limits -
by bloated software & increasing user-demands for more network bandwith.

B.t.w I've just checked the new G5 1.6GHz machine out, at our computing department.
Yes it's nice to look at, is it fast??? Yes it is a little bit snappier than my old G4-400.
NOT impressively so.
It felt on par with my Redhat 7 distro on an old Celeron PC with 384MB ram.
( I use that one for special backup purposes )

Cheers: Dixiechicken