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

[boze]

jeez, i'm getting outflanked on the left here..

dixie, now that this thread is officially and irretrievably off topic i'd like to follow along with your ideas..

first, what does it matter how stable unix is? this is a mac audio board, so even me comparing pc laptop value to demonstrate how mac laptops are underpowered or overpriced is only relevant as a tangent. you think we should recommend that the newbie wanting to start recording on his comp should run linux and Ardour or something?

osx is really slow, that's true- but that line about a G5 1.6ghz being 'not impressively snappier' than a G4 400mhz is a bit of a foot-in-mouth i think, your sys admin career notwithstanding. i mean c'mon- feeling snappy is no kind of test. i think the count in last months Sound-on-Sound had the number of platinum verbs you can run from a 400mhz G4 and a bunch of other comparable models with or without processor upgrades. a dp 800mhz runs like three times as many reverb plugins and i'm sure with that crazy system bus even the sp G5s will go another good way past that.

do you do audio production yourself? i can't imagine a single music person i've ever met who'd fail to feel the difference between a G4/400 and a G5/1.6.