@ llama : Agree that that a £500 PC will be capable of web design. I would however also start to dabble with graphic design, hence the interest in a Mac. I have no idea where all this will lead, but I have a lot of spare time and want to make better use of it.
There's no advantage of the Mac over the PC for either web design or graphic design. Pretty much all the standard software is Adobe stuff, which runs pretty much the same on either. It is worth buying a mac because you want a shinier looking operating system, or like the way Macs work generally, but it'll make bugger all difference to how well Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign etc. run. They all run great on Windows too.
Depending on what kind of graphic design you want to do (i.e. if you want to do things with print resolution photos) the processor spec could potentially make a big difference.
Also, my top web design tip, is that web design isn't really about writing web pages any more - nowadays anyone doing anything vaguely professional is using a content management system, so the only time they write much HTML is when programming templates for the CMS (which also often involves a fair bit of PHP or javascript programming). If you're writing a website that is ever going to be updated, you want it in a CMS. If you find yourself using Dreamweaver etc. to create core content for a website, you're probably about to build a rubbish hard to update website.
A side effect of that is that you really don't need to worry about what operating system you're using, as long as it has a web browser and general photo editing etc. tools.
having seen comments about setting up php, apache etc on Windows, it is a breeze on a mac. Everything is included out of the box. Not saying you should host a website on your mac but would allow you the chance to learn some of the server scripting should that be your thing.
The mac comes with a slightly dodgy setup of various web stuff installed, which probably isn't exactly what you'd want in the end. Changing it is a complete pain. Setting similar stuff up on a PC is really awfully hard, you have to go to wampserver.com, click 'download', run the installer, and then you have a pretty well thought out setup of all the web server stuff you'd need, which updates itself nicely, and even lets you install multiple older versions of things if you want to test against them. It is a million times easier than pissing around with the config files on the default setup you'd get on a Mac or Linux.
Joe
