[Macworld]

Post your comments for The best Mac ever here

[SkateNewYork]

I've got to agree with Andy -- it's gotta be the first Mac you ever owned. Mine was a 520C PowerBook. Boy did I love that machine. I later installed a modem and a card cage so that I could go on the Internet. Internet, and I loved showing it off to anyone who would watch.

Later on, every iteration of the PowerBook was my favorite computer. Apple did such a great job with these computers. But also loved the early iMacs as a desktop computer.

Best thing about Apple? Too many choices for your favorite computer.

[NaOH]

The first Mac I ever owned was the original LC.
In fact, I still have it at home. I really should dust it off and take it for a spin. Lots of good memories there.
I bought it specifically because it was capable of displaying colour. I had used SE/HD models at school, along with Macintosh Plus models with RAM upgrades, external hard drives and extra floppy drives. In comparison the LC seemed like a powerhouse.
However, my favourite Mac is one I never actually owned myself. It's the PowerBook 540c. It was the first Apple notebook computer to truly give me an alternative to desktops. I lusted for it for ages, but could never afford one.
On the topic of the SE/30. I remember having to service one of these that was experiencing a sticky hard drive. After checking Service Source, and working through the various fixes, I had almost resigned myself to telling the customer that the drive needed to be replaced.
That's when one of my colleagues asked me if I'd tried hitting it.
It turned out that the sticky hard drive wasn't as serious as it seemed, and a firm whack on the side of the case would get it going again.
I gave it a whack, and sure enough, the drive started working.
I don't think I'd dare to try that same trick today.

[Wizardling]

My favourite Mac was the IIci - fast, expandable, and dependable :-) I wish I'd had the chance to own my own sighs It was really something back in the day.

[RetiredMidn]

I think I'm going to pick the IIci as my favorite. It happened to be the first I owned outright, and it was (is; I still have it), and maxed out with 8Meg (!) of RAM and a floating point co-processor, in a reasonably compact casing.
The PowerMac 7600 gets a nod for its upgrade-ability (mine now runs on a G3 processor) and a case that was fun to unfold - once you got past that horrid crack when you first started to open it.
The original Mac II gets points just for being the first color, expandable Mac.

[bigh]

I'd second the IIci and it's blazing fast 25MHz processor. I owned two, and after illustrating a couple of textbooks on them, I sold them to a service bureau that ran them for years. Quite the workhorse. This was back when a Supermac 19" color monitor ran $3500, and the graphics card needed to run it was another $3k.
My personal all-time favorite was the Sawtooth model. I bought one used in 2001 for $1k in order to run OS X. After years of modifying the machine, I only recently replaced it - it provided enough power all those years to meet my needs. It's now a silent media server, with a 2TB RAID built in. It's my FrankenMac - unrecognizeable in its aluminum PC case, PC power supply, fanless graphics card, upgraded processor, and multiple drives. Running Tiger, it's the most stable machine I've ever owned.

[MiniMoe]

My first Mac was the SE with 20MB hard drive in 1987. It was our only home computer until we bought the LC III. I had many great times with the SE running Captain Magneto and other great games of the era, but have to admit getting color and 640 by 480 with the LC III made it my favorite.
Today, I have a dual quad-core Pro, a MacBook, and a Mini. Of these, I have a special fondness for the Mini and hope it continues in production for many years.

[spinoza2]

My favorite “Mac” was my NeXT Workstation, which I bought in 1990. I consider the NeXT to be what should have continued at Apple during the “exile” years of the 90s. It was so far ahead of its time that whenever I was forced to use a DOS/Windows machine at work they seemed like primitive toys in comparison to my NeXT. There was nothing close in terms of computing to running programs like Mathematica or WordPerfect on a NeXT back in 1990. When I returned to Apple products by getting a PowerBook, I went right to using OSX/Unix without skipping a beat (“Hey, this is just an upgrade to NeXTStep!”).

[wingsy]

I hope it's Ok to say that the best Mac I've ever owned is the one I've got now, a MacPro V8. And I've owned em all, from the original 128k Mac that I bought the day they came out in Jan 1984.
My 2nd best was a Power Tower Pro, which at the time was the fastest machine on the planet.
My 3rd would have to be that first Mac. Kept me up all night and sent me to the eye doctor the next day for severe eye strain.

[macgyverh]

At the end of my work day on 24 Jan 1984, I walked into my local mom-n-pop computer shop and purchased my first Macintosh. In the past 25 years, I've had the privilege of bringing Macs into a Fortune 500 company that was IBM-blue through and through and watched as the Macintosh users became more productive with free access to their data. I've had the opportunity to use Macs to build and operate 3 successful businesses, and in the process, I've been through many generations of Macs. My best so far is my current 3 GHz iMac as the power, quickness, solid design, and simplicity that is Macintosh have all been packaged into a 21st century desktop. Yes, I love my Mac MBA, too, but the iMac networked with a Time Capsule and digital connection to the internet represent the best.

[palane]

I'll disagree with Andy as the first Mac I owned (a dual floppy SE to which I later added a whopping 100MB hard drive). My 2nd, 3rd, and 4th were all decent computers, but nothing special for design (a pair of low end PowerBooks and a cheap clone).
Ah, but my Cube. I picked it up after the price dropped won to reasonable levels. Quiet, stylish, and a workhorse. It's not that difficult to upgrade either (memory, bigger hard drive, and an AirPort card). It sits on the shelf now and I'm delighted with my unibody MBPro. Still, that's the computer where Apple hit my sweet spot.
BB

[MacGod]

See, I go different ways, depending on what the question is, exactly.
I think the overall best Mac is the SE/30 for all the reasons listed above. I think the Mac most responsible for making Apple what it is today is either the original 128K or the iMac. That aquamarine gumdrop really started Apple on the upward slope to success.
If we're talking first Macs, my first Mac was a Plus I inherited from my dad when he upgraded. The first one just for me was an LC 475-loved the slim form factor.
However, I think my personal favourite, the one for which I have the overall fondest memories was my Duo 2300c and Duo Dock II. Super-light portable, expandable desktop form-factor docking station, good power for the time. It was lovely. I've had a series of PowerBooks (180c, Duo 230 or 280, I forget which), Duo 2300c, Powerbook 3400c and now a MacBook Pro. Each had pros and cons, but the Duo 2300c was my all-time favourite, I think.

[norton31]

I would have to agree with Andy. Although I used an original Macintosh at work and upgraded it to a Mac Plus, my first home Mac was a dual floppy SE. I quickly realized that I needed a hard drive and went to MacWorld Boston in 1988 with the sole purpose of buying one. When I got there, I discovered that I could buy a bigger hard drive than I could ever fill -- what a rush that gave me! So I bought a 100 MB Jasmine external drive for just over $1500. I still have the SE and the Jasmine case but I replaced the drive with a larger one at some point in time...I must have filled it :-(

[wsdr]

But by far my favorite right out of the box was the Titanium. It shipped with OS 9, and I kept it that way for a year. It was speedy with OS 9, and it was only after I made the jump a year later to OS X that I was disappointed in the performance. But despite the problems with paint and other minor issues, the fit and finish, size and weight were to me the convergence of the best available. I still have my Titanium, and the kids use it for MS Word and WikiPedia (when we kick them out of the den where their iMac is).
And I've owned a lot of Macs over the years, let's see:
512k (not the e, but upgraded to one)
Mac Plus
Macintosh SE/30
Macintosh Quadra 900
PowerBook 530c
PowerBook 530ce
PowerBook Duo
PowerBook Duo 270c
Macintosh Quadra 800
PowerBook 3400
PowerBook G3 300Mhz
Power Macintosh 6100
Power Macintosh 6150 (server)
Power Macintosh 7600
Power Macintosh 8500
Power Macintosh 9500
Power Macintosh G3 (Beige)
iMac Original Bondi Blue
iMac 266Mhz (2nd gen)
iMac 350Mhz (3rd gen, I think)
Power Macintosh Cube 450Mhz
PowerBook G4 "Titanium" 400Mhz
PowerBook G4 17" 1Ghz
17" Intel iMac
MacBook Pro 17" 2.16Ghz
I have worked with pretty much every single model of Mac through the years, and the only line of Macs I have never owned were the Mac II series -- I always had access to a company one during those years -- and the Performa series (ugh). I even worked with the original Mac Portable (a clunky suitcase model) and a 20th Anniversary Mac.
My first love-affair was with the 512k, and it was close to the most-tweaked computer I have ever owned. At one point I had a 1.5Mg RAM upgrade wedged in there, and booted from RAM disk (cause you sure didn't need 2Mb of STORAGE back then).
My most upgraded Mac was the PowerMac 8500; it had processor upgrades and RAM upgrades, plus a Radius VideoVision card for video output. I shudder to think of how much I spent on all of that when most of that capability was standard a couple of years later.
In a place of honor as our iTunes Jukebox is my PowerMac Cube. It began life as a WebSTAR web server for my company, got replaced by a G4 Tower and came home to sit in my office. It now has 1.5Gb of RAM, a 100Gb hard drive and an nVidia GE Force 6200 256Mb graphics card (a HUGE help with Leopard, which is installed on it). It acts as both the iTunes JukeBox, the server for our AppleTV media, and the server for our Time Machine backup drives (external FireWire on it). It gives it's all at a snails-pace, but plays music well, and never misses a beat sending out data over the network.
I made the jump to the PowerBook 17" as soon as it was announced, and again to the 17" MacBook Pro as soon as it was announced. I'll be getting the new 17" MacBook Pro as soon as I have the cash.