In almost 20 years of purchases, I have never bought a “consumer” Mac for use at home. Since the first Mac I bought for my own use — a IIci with an obscenely generous 8MB of RAM, for those wondering — it’s been pro-level machines for me. The last couple of iMac revs have made me re-think that policy, though. They are more than fast enough for all but the most processor-intensive tasks and most expandability these days is accomplished through external USB ports, not internal cabling. The only time I’ve gone into the innards of my current PowerMac G5 is to put in an extra internal hard drive or add RAM. As the time draws nearer to consider replacing “new Betsy,” I am for the first time, giving serious thought to an iMac.

Macworld has been thinking along the same lines lately, too, it seems. Jonathan Seff and Jason Snell have put together a great piece that “busts the myths” of choosing a new Mac. If you’re in the market for a new Mac and have always eschewed the consumer side of the line (or always thought your primary machine had to be a desktop), the article is definitely worth a read.