I'm a self-confessed Mac snob. It's the design mostly, and the way all the software just works so well and you don't need to install anything else. But I'm one of those Mac snobs that ends up spending more time on PCs, because of work and the fact that I own a PC and didn't buy a Mac because they were more expensive. But it's time to buy a new computer and that's a dilemma knowing the right one to choose.

It's not just a case of Mac or PC but computer shopping generally I dislike intensely. Because there are just so many different web sites and they all seem to offer different prices and I'm not sure why they offer different prices online for computers or whether that's because they are slightly dissimilar or whatever.

What gets me though is that I have this negative or at least unrealistic view of PC computers that I could buy online: A clunky monitor, brick of a hardware and dusty old keyboard with an unreliable and therefore highly annoying mouse. But new computers always look new and cool, if you know what I mean.

Especially the new branded ones from companies like Sony and HP and Panasonic. They're not supposed to be as cool as Macs (in my skewed impression of the world of shopping computers online) but lose the snobbery, and I'm sure one of these would do me just as, or more than, well.

So do I save money and not get a Mac online but instead cheap computers from an Internet shopping web site? And if I save money what do I do with the money I save from shopping online for a computer? And are Macs really that much more than a Toshiba or Sony?

It's time to compare prices for computers online. And compare the specifications ? now that's another thing I get really bothered with when choosing a computer on a shopping web site. Each computer view online seems to have something better than another, but then there's another aspect, like the memory or screen quality, that's not as good as the one I just thought wasn't as good. Or something.

Thankfully I can, if I can figure it out, get the computer comparison web site to show me all the information next to each other so I can work out quite easily what's the cheapest, best-est, good looking-est computer to buy online. Hopefully.

I suppose it's easy to compare the Mac computers online, because there aren't as many to choose from compared to PCs you can buy online. So in some respects it's easier.

Maybe I should just desist from buying computer altogether, saving me all that time trying to work out which one I need. Choice is a funny thing. Sometimes too much can be a disadvantage. At least though the computer comparison site can do all the donkey work for me.


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Sarah Maple uses Shopping.com to find cheap computers and compare prices.