Originally Posted by pplpilot

As for the general home use, photo editing/video editing /email/web type thing you cant go wrong with a mac, it comes with all the stuff you need to do this; all decent software to create profesionalish looking dvds with chapters etc etc, not el'cheepo looking nastiness that widows movie maker has to offer, the templates you get with mac are nice looking...

There are other advatages too, they are very very maintainance free, you dont get hit with spyware, adware trojans, virus or any other type of ****e that comes with using a windows based machine,

you say you'd like your kids to learn on your computer, this is where a mac is not for everybody, it's a fact that the massive majority of computing out there is windows/microsoft based and this is the basis of many a school curiculum, the chances of your kids learning computing on anything other than a windows based pc are very slim...

as much of a huge fan of apple and the mac OS i am i'd stick with a windows based pc if I were you, just make sure you have a decent forwall and anti virus installed ...
:rolleye11

As mark says del's are very good, I have a dell laptop that I 'have' to use for work and its fine, you'd be hard pushed to find better although acer are worth a look...

oops rambled a bit, sorry.