I love Vista SP2 RC 64-bit and my Macbook Air both. I guess I think their both decent O/S's. I guess I really love the Thinkpad keyboard. I'd be much happier if my MBA had a thinkpad keyboard. To be blunt they are both great. the 64-bit Vista has been rock solid. I have not had 1 crash yet.

The Missing Sync has been very nice to me and every question I've asked has been promptly handled.

only if 'should' means the way microsoft implemented it.

home and end keys predate both mac and windows and always meant beginning and end of the document or screen (thus the names of the keys).

if you want beginning or end of the current line, use command-left arrow or command-right arrow (which makes sense, as it's an extension of what the left and right arrows do).

you aren't getting the same configuration in a $500 laptop as you do in a $1000 macbook.

I have both: a macbook and a PC dualbooting Vista and Ubuntu sitting on my desk at home and a Dell laptop for work. I love having my e-mail and other general browsing on my macbook. I love being able to use my desktop for number crunching or movies. I don't think a mac will solve many problems that couldn't just as easily be solved by good antivirus software and vigilance on the PC as far as malware and viruses. On the other hand, my mac is good for not worrying, honestly it just works, I don't have to worry about drivers or system crashes or downloading a nasty bug, the PC is a utility machine, most of the software out there is available for both, but you will run into problems where you can't get the software you need to run on OS X. In the end it comes down to how important it is for you to not worry about the little things and whether that trade is worth complete compatibility.

I switched from my Dell laptop to a macbook pro last fall. I am very happy and probably won't go back for personal use (still use my windows laptop for work which is provided by my employer). For web surfing, I like Safari, and the apple mail program is good for email. I tried iwork, but decided on microsoft office to keep compatability with my excel files and work documents. There is no contest for photos, my dell laptop choked on editing raw files from my digital SLR. The coolest thing is that for the few programs I want to run under windows, I use vmware fusion. This includes Quicken, Turbo Tax and a couple of excel files that use macros (not compatible with msoffice for mac 2008). Using vmware fusion, i was able to port over my whole windows laptop without reloading the operating system or any of the applications. My macbook pro runs windows better and faster than my 3 year old dell laptop.

Point 1. I agree with most that Apple's just "work" out the box with no muss, no fuss..which make them great machines. However, given the fact of the smaller platform, you really should expect something like this. MS is trying to create compatible drivers for many different configurations that Apple hasn't even touched yet but somehow I believe as Apple expands their market share, esp on the Intel platform, this will eventually become the case for them as well....i.e. Hackintosh

Point 2. I agree with your assesment of the Windows 7 OS. I'm running the beta as well and it has been rock solid even with me throwing a ton of programs at it....this is what vista "should" have been

Turbo Tax CD also has a Mac version that you just drag over. Works fine and probably will import your Quicken files without any problems as well as import W-2 and 1098-DIV from online brokerages.

The unibody MacBooks, the ones made from a single block of silver-colored aluminum, has mini Displayports, the new thing. You'd have to get a mini DP to DVI or HDMI cable or adaptor to hook up to an HDTV.

The cheaper $999 white MacBooks may still have mini DVI ports. You'd probably need a cable for that as well.

That wouldn't strictly be streaming though, it would be a direct connection from the laptop to the TV.

But I know people do stream from Macs to say PS3s which are hooked up to TVs. You have to really fiddle though to make that work.

The hassle free approach would be getting an AppleTV to complement the Mac (or PC, they work with iTunes for the PC as well).

As others have noted, you can run Office for the Mac or you can install Boot Camp (you need your own copy of Windows) which comes with the Mac OS 10.5.x or you can buy Parallels or VMWare Fusion. Then you can install the Windows version of Office or whatever else you want.

Boot Camp boots Windows natively or Parallels and Fusion run Windows within virtual machines.

As for Adobe, I believe there are Mac versions of Photoshop but of course it's not cheap. Nor is Light Room.

On the Mac side, you get iLife with your Mac, which includes iPhoto 09, which is a great photo management software with RAW support, face-detection and tagging, geotagging, syncing with Flicker or Facebook.

It also includes iMovie for video editing, Garage Band for learning to play music or playing with music composition, iWeb for simple web page composition.

Aperture is a competitor to Adobe Lightroom, which costs about the same. Final Cut is for serious video editing, which competes with Adobe Premier.

Tekserve, my local Mac place, is advertising the earlier version of the Air for $1100.

Actually the body is made from anodized aluminum, so it's aluminum-colored aluminum :)

I got MediaLink and it took 30 seconds to setup streaming to my PS3. Very easy.
http://www.nullriver.com/products/medialink

The Apple Store online has refurbished 1.6ghz models for $999. Comes with a 1 year warranty and you can get the extended 3yr Apple Care warranty on it as well. I bought one of these when they first came out for $1800 so $999 is a pretty good deal.

I would really advise getting the new version or getting the new Macbook instead (which I also got when they first came out). The performance on the new version is much much better than the first gen Air. Its actually similar to the performance of the regular Macbook, especially if you get the SSD. But by then you're looking at $2500.

If you work for a big company or federal government or in education, you can also get a small discount if buying directly from Apple. Otherwise Amazon is usually a better deal as you can avoid taxes in most places and get free shipping.

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.

there is, and adobe will exchange the windows version for the mac version (or vice versa) for the cost of shipping. there is also photoshop elements which is typically under $100 for non-pro users.

Mac vs. PC!

There is no definite answer to that question!

Here's my humble experience:

I've been playing around with computers since I was ten (I'm 37 now) and I think I qualify as a "Geek".
I started with a Sinclair ZX81 back in 1982 and went to a Dragon 32, then Apple IIe, Commodore 64, Amiga 500, Mac 2Cx, PowerMac 7500, Powerbook G3, Powerbook G4, PC P4 XP, another Powerbook G4, PC Vista, Toshiba XP PC Notebook, MacBook Intel, Acer Aspire One Linpus...

I am currently using on a regular basis: 2 XP PCs, 1 Vista PC, a Macbook, a Powerbook G4 1.5GHz, a Powerbook G4 500Mhz, a Toshiba XP PC notebook, and an Acer Aspire One Linpus...

As you can see I'm a late PC adopter.

Anyway, I've never spent so much time troubleshooting computers than after I started to buy PCs. Macs tend to be a lot more reliable in my experience and more importantly they're a lot easier to back-up and restore than PCs.
You can just clone a Mac HD to an external HD and clone the external HD back to the MAC HD or any other Mac HD. No need to reconfigure things, worry about drivers, motherboard etc... It will just work!
It's very easy. Should your Mac die, just buy another one and clone your back-up external HD to it and it will just run the way your dead Mac used to.

This is not something you can do on a PC. It is just a pain when you buy a new machine. The parameters transfer utility provided in Windows just doesn't work/isn't reliable.
The Mac utility that does that works flawlessly...


So anyway, You can do the same using a Mac and a PC.
If there is a PC software that doesn't exist on the Mac, you can run it using Parallels or Bootcamp.
Macs are a lot easier to use IMHO and easier to backup.

Just my 2 cents!