it is, but then i'm not that tech yet

Well if you did decide to we could talk you through from an empty case to first boot and beyond "eg" £500 home build would cost around £800+ from a shop and for £500 you can build quite a respectable Computer > "eg" Intel Duo CPU, Something like a P35 Chip Motherboard, 2GB Ram, SATA HDD, Mid Range GPU, DVDR/W, 500w PSU, and all in a nice Case, your OS could be Ubuntu "Free", i would be happy to help, and once you have all the compatible components its not that hard to build a system, its an option that is open to you

Edit - Thinking a Barebones Bundle may be a good start, you get Case, Motherboard, CPU / Heat sink / Fan, Ram and PSU assembled in one box you just add Optical drive and HDD - Graphics Card if you want, if your interested i can PM you some links

"eg" >>>

this comment is on hold, until I read the posts I missed the first time around

OK >

Very interesting, regarding the external usb hub.

I had a probelm recently with the same (although didn't fry anything thank gawd) - once I'd connected & all, everything worked fine, but at bedtime, I couldn't turn the PC off ( ) It was kinda freaky - until I realised that, even though I'd offed the PC, the powered USB hub was keeping it up & running. So now I use 'that' hub & others, but only via usb>PC and I just don't connect the usb hub power. All works fine, but now I don't get power into PC via a unexpected (& possibly dangerous to MoBo) route.

I couldn't turn the PC off

It seams like your config as to power input has caused this so if you don't want to change the config you could use an auto switch off "eg" the e-on switch (or an equivalent) > Here

I have two, Cat

Ha - right you are You learn somethnig every day

One other thing this works very well > Force Shutdown

Cat

update on this: the guy at the shop opened it up to put the HD in a new enclosure for me - bugger if it wasn't a RAID of two 250GB HD's so i'd lose the data anyway. just biding my time at the minute on getting a new one and looking around to see if there are any mac specialists around here.

Two of my WD Raptors are RAID 0 and the 3rd is not as 1st partition is for my OS but you don't here of Raptors failing, may be an idea not to go RAID with your Mac Ian

we're talking external hard drive here cat, remember, the thing with externals is you don't know until you open up the case

G-RAID mini was made for Mac, bit redundant now but some BIOS will tell you, anyway for your Mac you don't have to go RAID and you can network a Mac to a PC > Read Here