ROFL from what? Soviet military software?

At least we have your wife's completely objective opinion now.

I am a Mac guy with 4 Macs in my house (one for each person) along with a Windows Netbook and a few Windows laptops.

For your question, I would stay with Windows. The main impediment for you will be Access and interoperability with your colleagues and, frankly, that's a good enough reason to stay with Windows, IMO.

He could try running BootCamp or Parallels Fusion to run Access.

Then play around with the Mac alternatives and see if it improves his process in some other ways.

The Windows compatibility will be a bridge to experimenting with another platform.

But for intensive IO and CPU tasks like database, I'd go with a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook Air. Heavier but you get more bang for the buck.

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.

I went from a Windows Vista to a Mac environment last year, primarily for the matte screen on the 17" Mac book pro. I travel and do consulting for a living so it took some work to get everything working on the MacBook.

I run VMWare Fusion on Mac Snow leopard with a Windows XP image. It works great and allows me to both access Mac and Windows together.

I also have BootCamp with a full Windows 7 install, to run more intensive MSFT programs like SQL Server. This works well too, the only major negative is that sometimes it requires a reboot to get to a file that's on the other image.

Pros:
- Mac OS is pretty good, easy to do many things
- Hardware is awesome

Cons:
- I'm more comfortable with Windows and don't really know how to do many things in Mac (I need to take a course at the apple store)
- File management - have to be very strict on where I store things to keep files in order, especially for multiple clients being run across Mac OS, Windows XP, and Windows 7.
- Cannot play any kind of games in VMWare Fusion (not a huge con)
- Windows smart phone will not sync correctly with VMWare image

Overall I would do it all again just for the beautiful hardware.

Excel 2003 files from Windows are totally compatible with Excel 2004 files from Macintosh. They go back and forth freely, with no changes required in either direction, no loss of data or formatting, etc., etc. If you and your clients upgrade to newer versions of Office, the same is true of Excel 2007 (Windows) and Excel 2008 (Mac). So, if you want to switch, this requirement is not even a small obstacle. If only one of you upgrade, 2007/2008 software can read and write 2003/2004 files. It can even be set to make 2003/2004 its default file saving format. This is also true whether Mac or Windows is running the newer version.

I would caveat the excell and other msft office comment above with a +1 for compatibilty but with the caveat that the FONTS must be the same or similar class. I HAVE HAD translation errors when the font isn't present on one or the other system, and the system replaces it and then one can get border, magin and page errors.

I am a Mac fanboy but I have to call foul on this one. The Office 2008 suite does not support Visual Basic, and thus any homemade macros that automate functions or process data won't work in 2008. This has been a keen source of frustration for me; seems like it's something Microsoft is doing just to prevent compatibility for power users and custom apps and keep the score a bit higher on the XP/Vista side.

You can run Windows on any current Mac. You have to install Windows yourself though. So you can use the mac in Windows mode with all your existing PC software.

Then boot to the Mac and play around with Snow Leopard and Keynote, which you may or may not end up preferring to Powerpoint.

If you like doing stuff with photos, music and video, iLIfe is highly-regarded.

agree with this....I run vmware fusion for two reasons: quicken and to use several exel sheets that have macros...the macros are in visual basic and don't run on Mac Office 2008--some of my friends stuck with older versions of mac office so that they could use the visual basic macros.

This applies equally to file transfers between two Windows machines or two Macs. It's inherent in file sharing. If this sort of thing matters, you have to check it on each system. It may not be the same as it was on the system where the file came from, even if both use the same platform.

Good point about VB, if that's an issue. I don't use it, so I didn't think of it. Thanks for pointing it out.

absolutely, but the standard font install from any os, and the same program install on the same os, should pretty much guarantee that a standard font is there same OS, same application install. But, I use a version of Arial on the PC which for whatever reason is NOT on the mac OS install or the office for mac install. Makes no sense actually.

You must be referring to Arial Unicode MS, since all the others ("plain" Arial, Narrow, Black and Rounded MT Bold) are on both platforms with the same variations. There isn't much reason to use Arial Unicode MS unless you need the extended Unicode character set, though some people may like its ever-so-slightly-wider characters (compared to "plain" Arial). In any case, Arial Unicode MS is bundled with Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6, so if you're on either of the two most recent OS versions (as a new "switcher" would be) this should no longer be an issue. If you're not, a Mac version of Arial Unicode MS is widely available, and there are freeware font conversion utilities that would let you use the Windows font.

I'm on snow leopard on both platforms, but I'll check out the font issue. Now I am curious.

I haven't read the entire thread but here are my 2cents

I switched some 6 years ago. At the time I was deep in to webdesigning. Picking up my concert photography hobby and then some video editing. I've found that for all of the above the mac has been invaluable.

Recently, getting but in to touring with bands and currently out with a native major production I find that PC users on the tour are a minority. It's gotten so far I have pieces of tape with my name stuck on my charger and laptop.

On this particular tour I am one of the soundengineers. I go with two of the artists to a mall, set up, play their backing track and mix their vocal on top. The "excellent CD player" the company sent me out with turned out to be a disaster. Today I installed a nice little application on to my mac, specifically built for people working with backtracks. The drawback is that as I'll be working off my mac I will now not be able to record a show or two, as I had planned. (I'll work around that with my ipod at some point.)

My old PC laptops would be exchanged about every year. My Mac's have lasted me 3 years each. The one I'm typing this on will be 3 in November and I can't see me getting a new mac within the next year, unless it breaks down on me. Upgrading the HDD was a doddle and it's now running a 500gb drive. Putting ram in was even easier.

Since switching I have gotten my mother to turn in to a macfreak. When my sister wanted a mini eeePC I found her a 2nd hand 12" powerbook with peripherals for a bargain. Neither of them can not consider going back to PC.

Another friend of mine poured a pint full of squash in to her macbook a year ago. We took it apart, rinsed the keyboard off with distilled water, sat with q-tips and water and picked up any residue off the logicboard, let it all dry over night, put it together and it's working still.

At work there are four of us with Macs. We're all looking at the PC users shaking our heads.

The only thing I haven't found for mac is a lighting console emulator software. Those apparently only exist for PC. Sooner or later the lighting people will catch up with the fact that in this line of business Mac is defacto standard. However - that is not a major issue as I don't see me running the board for moving lights anytime soon.

So, in short, I have found that my mac is versatile and adapts to almost anything I throw at it.

I'd better get back to tweaking that singback software. Show tomorrow.

Ps.
I've kicked out office and use iwork. I found it working perfect for my needs.(writing proposals and contracts, spreadsheets and presentations)
I love Bento to keep track of gigs. and what files and e-mails are connected to them.
I love Scrivener for writing my diary.
ichat, skype and adium works a treat.
Tubestick gives me access to digital freeview channels, even from the tourbus.
My DSLR and my digital videocamera are both accepted by the mac as plug-n-play hardware.
Garageband, plug the mac in to L/R on the mixing console and record the live gig. Sweet!