Originally Posted by caspritz78

I switched from Windows XP to Mac last December and I'm happy with my decision. I need my MacBook Pro mainly for surfing the internet, reading emails, doing some text editing, watching movies, etc. Everything works fine and is pretty easy to use. I can't say how well a Mac would work in an all Windows office environment.

From some experience I can say that Word, Excel and Powerpoint for Mac with the latest updates from Microsoft work fine. Entourage on the other hand is light years away from Outlook and no fun to work with. Apple's Mail and Thunderbird for Mac are much better but lack the tight integration of Outlook with an Exchange Server. So for people who rely on Outlook and Exchange for work should think twice about getting a Mac. You might be disappointed. An alternative is to install bootcamp and run Windows XP or Vista on a second partition but in this case you can buy a high-end Windows laptop cheaper.

My biggest issue so far with my MacBook Pro is the DVD Superdrive. While it is pretty simply with most Windows PCs and laptops to make the DVD drive region free it is impossible with the drives installed in the newer Macs. The drive won't play any DVDs if it doesn't get a key which is compares the region setting of the DVD with the setting of the drive. This is done within the drive and can't be overwritten by software.