actually one thing i forgot to ask was, was there anything "bad" about your Dell system?? If you were satisfied with the Dell, why ceven onsider the Mac? Dont get me wrong I am not anti mac (you could even say I am jealous of mac users out there), just asking because i will need to be upgrading my dell in about 6 months... so seeing if there is a clear pain point that i am in denial about that could be totally alleviated with a mac replacement..
Overall, there really isn't one specific pain point in particular that I have with Windows. However, OS X seems to offer some enhanced functionality for web development (e.g. UNIX underpinnings, MAC-only development tools). There also seems to be a lot of momentum for web development on the Mac these days, but I didn't want to switch systems based on that alone. I'm looking for gains in productivity.
My Dell Dimension system is about 4 years old (Pentium 4/3.2Ghz running Windows XP) and has required a new power supply, RAM and the HD seems to be next. The power supply failed at around 14 months (I only had a one year warranty -- bad move in hindsight) and Dell support sent me around in circles for a month to get a replacement. I ended up finding one on eBay. If I ever purchase another Dell, it would be from their business division (OptiPlex or Precision) which seems to offer much better support and use standard parts.
ah so technically its not a tool (i mean software wise) related issue... again dont want to start any flameworks... if you are interested in a unix-y environment you might as well go to the source and use linux (i use fedora but more hard core users may recommend debian or free bsd, both of which are exceptional)... point is if you dont mind the non-cool look might as well have your dev box be as much of a clone of your prod environment, like a couple of others who mentioned that..
as i was saying if you bring in iphone or mac dev into the scene then you dont have much of a choice unless you want to play around with installing osx on a PC and all that headache (which i do plan to do myself in order to avoid forking out a fortune on a mac)
yeah productivity is very subjective so cant comment on that... for example in linux i love it that when i do an alt-tab the window currently in the alt-tab "round" gets a highlight so it is quick and easy to spot. i tried quite a few task-switching plugins in windows and have still not stumbled on this feature... silly isnt it? amazing what little things can can do to productivity...
