welcome to the good side of life

there's a lot of good info in this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...29-mac-pc.html

as to your questions "can the Mac read all of the files I've got stored on external hard drives? (.jpg and .avi), yes.

just about any graphics file can be read by the mac's own program called "preview" but if for some reason preview doesn't want to open the file, there is a terrific shareware program called "graphicconverter" (not expensive and well worth paying for) which can open any type of graphics file and save it to just about any graphics format you like

as to avi files, quicktime (apple's video player) can open them tho you might need to download "flip4mac" (can't remember the registration fee but iirc, it's not much) which allows quicktime op open avi's