Going for a Mac
This is one of the most difficult decisions I have to make - spending more on hardware to increase my productivity. Recently I also purchased a lot of books and resources as I am totally addicted to learning more about Ruby and recently I have an interest for Objective-C. And by the time I get started I hope the cost of an iPhone is half-price and it's quite predictable that prices will be lower by the end of the year or early next year. All of my endeavors are self-funded and I worked hard for everything I have because I'm nothing close to Parish Hilton. That's hot ;)
Earlier this year, I had posts on how to make some Windows applications work on Linux. And a user was disappointed with my simple answer: virtualization. Virtualization with VMWare or Virtualbox works really well but you need a lot of memory. Chances are your machine will automatically shut down and you'd lose your work if you are running below 2GB of RAM and you want to do some animation work. It's pretty tough. My final suggestion is to get a Macbook or a Macbook Pro, whichever suits your budget.
If you read my previous post, it's pretty much contradicting this post but not really. I will probably be using an older version of Mac OS. Go Koala! I'm still going to use Ubuntu and will even force my non-geek sister to learn Linux. Sure, she'll love Ubuntu.
By the way, all my geekier posts are in Rails & Beyond.
I am inviting Rails developers and non-Rails developers who are willing to learn and share something about Rails to join. If you're looking to have a career in application development, I'd be adding some feature or interface enhancement to allow other users to request for your resume. I'll probably redesign the whole interface later.
