SteveR750:
JohnDuncan:If you're used to using Windows, stick with Windows. I'm no huge fan of Vista (I think it's counterintuitive if you cut your teeth on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups) but it still broadly behaves how you expect computers to behave. Macs need a whole new way of thinking (oh yes they do) and if you can't be bothered, you might as well get a Windows PC.
On the plus side with a Mac, wireless networking just works©, you don't get viruses (generally), they're pretty, getting bit perfect audio is easy, blah blah
In what way, any examples?
The one thing that puts me off a Mac apart from the price is that I use MS office and Outlook all day every day and have done for years. I cannot imagine owning a PC without Excel for example.
Lots of things. Alt-tab doesn't switch between windows of the same application. You create a new folder and it ends up not being where you want it and you have to move it - I think the standard operating procedure for Macites is to create one on the desktop and drag it to where you want it. On the plus side, the 'Folder Alias' concept is brilliant. Getting to the desktop is a keystroke rather than a button on the taskbar, but conversely 'Spaces' is great, whereby you can have a number of different desktops and switch between them. Things like that, just a different mindset required.
Office 2007 for Mac looks very pretty but doesn't support VBA if you're a fan of creating custom functions or programmability - I think even NeoOffice (a Mac port of OpenOffice) might be better in this regard, but it's no big deal for me as I don't tend to use it.
As someone else mentions, running a copy of windows via Bootcamp is amazing - if you boot up into windows XP on a Mac it runs like lightning, and if you add VMWare or Parallels you can run Windows apps seamlessly in your Mac desktop with minimal performance hit. Costs 50 quid though (and you need a copy of Windows as well).