You were probably shown the 13" Macbook Air
It's a smart bit of kit, but you can save a fair bit by going for a Mac mini if you don't need portability and already have a decent screen. That's what I use... lack of a built in optical drive is the only downside I've found.
Fazerider, yeah, I think that's the one I was looking at. I think I want to go for a laptop this time, not only for the portability, but also because I'm pushed for space at home. The battery life of up to 12 hours seems pretty good, although it will be mostly for home use I think.
But I did like the photo software - allows me to do a number of things, such as enhance detail in shadow areas, change contrasts etc, and comes pre-installed (seems to me you get less and less ready-to-go software with computers these days).
So photography and an easy-to-use method of organising my pics (upwards of 3000 now!), making albums etc - my current desk top uses HP Photosmart - it's so frustrating, any task takes forever. This iMac was so easy to work with in comparison.
There is also a possibility I might want to do a project using my photos and adding text in the future - it's something I have half an idea of at the moment, but couldn't expand more on that right now. Kind of like writing an illustrated reference book.
I will want to use it to play music on too, so will need a decent option on (compact) speaker systems. Again, something like 500 albums in my collection now.
I do have a stand-alone hard drive which everything is currently backed up onto, 1tb, so basically endless storage space that I'll probably never fill.
And of course, general internet use.
But if it has a good selection of software and capability, who knows what I might end up wanting to do in the future.
Liam, quite possibly a Windows system will also do everything I want, but where can I go to try it out, and be shown directly what it's capability will be? That's the thing with this shop in Oxford - it's the only place I know of where you can do that. You tell them what you want to be able to do, and they physically demonstrate it right there in front of you. I know I'd probably pay over the odds there, and of course there will always be an element of them trying to sell me what they want to sell (they are an Apple specialist after all, so that's what they do exclusively). But they can offer friendly back up, relatively locally, which to a numpty like me, has to be worth something!