Tom, A Mac is not necessarily the answer. I've had an iMac for four years. The two best things about it are that it's absolutely silent apart from the occasional bit of hard disk chatter (it has no fan) and so far I've never been plagued by malware (famous last words). On the other hand, the operating system is opaque. Before this iMac, I had a Windows PC. I was reasonably handy at sorting out problems and even poked around in MSDOS from time to time. I moved over to Mac when I had a boot sector virus and overheating problems (I live in Spain) at the same time. But I've never been entirely convinced it was a wise move. A surprising number of web sites are not Mac friendly and the operating system is a major drawback. If you like fiddling about with your soft and hardware, if you even like knowing which folder your e-mail is stored in, then a Mac is not for you unless you are prepared to dedicate a lot of time to managing the computer. I have very simple requirements as a translator, hence the age of my computer. All my other Mac user acquaintances have had very expensive recourse to Mac technicians to sort out soft and hardware problems. And boy do these problems occur... Next computer I buy is likely to be a Windows PC. Snoop