This is gonna get epic.... see...MAC vs PC thread Honestly, i am using a beefy HP setup, absolutely Dumbed down windows, I use Ableton to write and play live, it goes without issue, i am on top of every process within my unit tho... I have been looking into Mac One thing, Macs build (not the pretty shite) has a unique feature within that completely stops all vibration. This is why alot of producers will have Macs for recording etc. My HP has had issues with hum and vibration (since fixed by a hack job to remove the earth on my power cord) but i record alot of live instruments and very odd samples, and when you get deep into the audio for this, it becomes noticable... But straight live performance should be through a nice ext sound card anyway, so that will buffer alot of it. Honestly, you just want as much power/ram/HDD as you can get for your $$$ So that leaves you searching