Which Mac to get?

I am getting a new Mac and wandered if anyone knew which one was best within a resonalbe budget. My current Mac is above the spec recommended by Linden but only works well if I turn all the settings down.

I have read post saying things don’t run great on Intel Macs and other saying they do, can anyone clarify the situation.

I usually run SL along side some voice software with a few other apps running in the background. Can anyone recommend a good machine for this, (please don’t just point out the top one).

Things run considerably better on Intel macs than the old Powermacs provided they have a seperate graphics card rather than onboard graphics.

So... an iMac or a Mac Book Pro NOT a Mac Mini or a Mac Book basically.

The Intel Mac Pros should be along soon too if you have the money to spare.

Increased memory can't hurt either, I'd go with 1Gig to be happy in SL.

Your really best on waiting (unless you want a laptop) until the Powermac replacements are released. Its expected that they will be released sometime next month.

The Powermac replacements are what most people are refering to as "Mac Pros" there is no proof that Apple is going to use that name, but it seems many have decided its right just because Apple filed for a trademark on "Mac Pro" during much name speculation. What those people dont know is there are hundereds of names like that that Apple has filed for over the years that they have never used.

Hopefully we wont have to wait much longer to find out the real name of these machines. I'm hoping Apple can come up with a better name than "Mac Pro"

Missy's right...but if you can't wait, I am very happy with sl performance from my MacBook Pro (2GHz, 2 Gb RAM)

I suggest you get at least a gig of RAM

You definitely want a unit with a good graphics card such as the ATI X1600 that comes in the Macbook Pro boxes. The Integrated graphics such as the Intel graphics chipsets won't offer you the performance you would desire out of SL, which is the only reason why I can't reccomend a standard Macbook or Mini.

SL runs excellent (better than my PC desktop) on my Macbook Pro 2.16ghz. I've done quite a bit of monitoring and posted some other posts with performance stats. I usually pull 12-38 frames with my average probably being 25-30fps. The low end only seems to be hit when I'm downloading/caching like crazy. I just did a little experiment to get some stats - while caching it drops to 15-20fps in my current area and while flying around a pre-cached area it is running 25-30ish.

I'm very happy with the overall experience so far.