i was advised to purchase a mac desktop in order to get my design business going however i really don't know what the big difference is between PC's and Mac's. ive done some research hear and there and with the exception on Mac's being sleek and good looking i haven't found much incentive to drop pc's. i have a 1200 budget and wanted to spend my money wisely. the base iMac is around 1200 but im not sure if the name is what im paying for. no i have never owned a mac but i have used one plenty of times. any advise or recommendations?

I was about to log off and go to bed when I saw your question. Believable it or not today I saw something that would be right up your street. People are very misguided, People that buy a mac don't know the first thing about Apple Mac, they haven't got a clue about the operating system or the hardware

Mac computers are 'No' different from any other Intel manufactured computer, They all have the same Intel components inside Mac OS/x does get Viruses, Mac OS/x does crash and freeze up, All you need to do is go through the questions here on answers to see all the problems people are having with their Macs, or do a Google search for Mac complaints, or Mac Customer Service complaints, See what you get...

I am not going to advise you in what computer to buy. I will advise you that the top three manufactures are Asus, Acer and Sony, You do your research on them,

You say your going into Computer Aided Design, Adobe is only one of many Graphics software packages and a very expensive software packages at that, Here is were I can save you hundreds of dollars and with the saving you can buy the best computer with the latest technology the Intel i7 second generation processor

Check this out CAE = Computer Aided Engineering it's free to download and use you get everything you'll need for Computer Aided Design, plus 3D Animated Graphics Design software All 4.1 gigabytes of software download it from here released October 28th 2011
http://distrowatch.com/

You claim to be a designer. You claim to have used Macs "plenty of times". You claim you cannot see a difference. How strange....

If your budget is $1200, you would do much better off by getting a Windows PC. I've never gotten an answer myself to why Macs are apparently better for design and such; that would depend on the program.