Been a Mac user going back to a Apple II EI think was the model. In the 3d world, poser, and other apps. I run P6, P7, Shade, Cimema104d of course the office apps and the CS2 family among a whole bunch of other stuff. I have not upgraded to an intel chipped Mac yet

To be honest:
I have a windoze laptop to run a single app used for scoring go-kart races. However I do admin about 30 desktops at work and we are about 60-40, Win to Mac. There are certain main stream apps like Pro-engineering-Auto-Cad and a zillion tools and plugins designed for Poser and other 3d apps that are not available for a Mac if you are on a PPC chipped machine like me. But with the new Mac OS that is coming out in the next 60 days that changes even further as stated above in intel based Macs. Currently you can use an app called parallel to run both windoze apps and Mac apps at the same time. The current version of Boot camp by Apple you have to boot into either windoze or Mac, not run both concurrently. The one thing about running concurrently that I would verify is that you can use shared content. IE if you are running a windoze app can you get to your poser runtimes on the mac side that you might have inside the Mac applications folder, vs a document shared folder. Something like the old Virtual PC software that mac users have struggled with for years and could never do.

One thing you will notice that for whatever reason Apple keeps people like ATI, Nivada out of the market of selling aftermarket graphic cards. So if you buy via the apple online store in build to order, make sure you get the card you want up front as the upgrade paths can be done via a bunch of 3rd part hacks, not vendor supported methods. Not exactly the path I would go down if the OS changed and you needed a different driver. Other quirks are you you can't just pull a jump drive out of a USB slot, without it complaining. But you just dismiss the dialog and forget it. Same with ejecting CD's and DVD's. There is no button to push on the front of the case like on a PC. You do it from the keyboard or by dragging the Icon to the trash. Try telling a new Mac user to drag stuff to the trash to eject it and they look at you like you are nuts, thinking they will erase something. Unlike older Mac's pre OSX, you can't just move things around and place apps anywhere you like. They need to stay put where they are installed and don't rename their folders or file names or all heck breaks out when you up grade something. Just like leaving a poser item in the correct folder inside the runtime. Docs, you are free to move anywhere.

Granted a very biased user, but you get protected memory which means any app can collapse and you just relaunch and keep going. The only reason I reboot my Mac at work or at home is because of an OS upgrade. They both have been on constantly for over a year with no issues. Granted there are windoze users that will claim the same thing I am sure. The directory structure, moving between external drives etc, to me has always been quicker and easier on Mac's. I think that is because that has been my only personal OS since the 1980's. Granted I love real estate, so I have 2 23 inch flat panels displays side by side and they act was one desk top, so I just slide things out of the way to the monitor on the left. The folders when opened don't hog the full screen by default. They remember the location and the size they were the last time you opened them and where they were, even in my double panel layout.

On a Mac stay away from Nortons anything Virus or otherwise. One you don't need it. And their disk utilities cause more problems then they solve.

Just like you are going to hear people say they would never use a Mac, I am the reverse and would never run Windoze unless I absolutely had no choice. And to get my one major kick in the shins (it's a joke OK) to windoze users and based on the recent cropping of thumbnails in the store, etc here and the nudity issue....Why anyone would buy software from a company that was named after the founders personal short comings below the belt is beyond me!! (rimshot)

Gary

"Those who lose themselves in a passion lose less than those who lose their passion"