I'm not sure if buying an iMac would be worth it, and if so, 20 inch or 17?

Question

Hello all. I'm a new user. A friend of mine has a 17 inch Imac that be purchased before the Intel's came out.
Now I am a pretty large PC user, but whenever I go over to his house, and use his mac, it just feels so user friendly and great, that it makes me want to purchase one.
One of the main reasons I want to buy a Mac is the fact that I am big into audio recording. I see all the studios and serious audio recorders use macs. This enticed my want for one as well.
Secondly, I am looking into to getting into video editing. My friend with the iMac uses final cut pro, and I have used it on his and it's great.
I do a fair bit of gaming on my current PC, which my brother built. Unfortunately he's taking it to college at the end of the summer.
So I think to myself, I could contiune playing elder scrolls IV on a mac, and have great audio and video capabilties.
So as I browse this forum, I don't have that big of a budget. $1300 was a push for me to buy the lowest possible imac. However I read something about the 17 incher sucking at gaming because of the weak GPU.
I don't know if its worth it to look at the 20 inch model, or just stick with the 17 inch one and hope it holds.
I want to make the jump from PC to Mac, but my entire family are big PC people, and i just don't know. Can someone recommend me a mac, and reassure that I seem to be making the right move?
Thanks, if you read all that.

Answer 1

Given your budget, have you considered a secondhand G4 tower? You'd have the upgrade potential that the iMac's design doesn't permit. Then you could run dual internal hard drives, select your graphics card, and have PCI slots for any expansion cards your audio and/or video projects might require. The iMacs are great right out of the box, but if you're someone who'd like the flexibility to customize your computer for specific needs, I'd consider something like the 2002 G4 MDD model. Why not post your question in the G4 Expansion Forum, and see what advice/suggestions you receive from other G4 owners? Of course, you'd need to get a display, but then again, there are plenty of CRT or LCD models to choose from. If you've got a decent display for a PC, you can use it with the Mac.