Thanks for the great advice. I especially appreciate the comments about interoperability.

I'm not married to Access - I just use it to merge giant data sets and extract subsets for serial analyses; there's no requirement for exchanging Access files with my colleagues.

However, I do have to share Excel 2003 files with colleagues, and more importantly, clients. In my world (small/mid-size manufacturing), clients all use PCs - only once in 10 years have I encountered a Mac at a customer site.

And I'll most likely have to keep some PC around anyway, to support my Luddite partner.

So I guess I'll have to stick to Microsoft for now. It's too bad - I really like some features of Snow Leopard, and I really detest Powerpoint, but it is what it is.