[RWebb]

Byron, I just switched from Win 7 to a mac mini (OSX) and would advise you not do it.

The hardware on the mini is a marvel of design & engineering but has numerous usability flaws:

- reading an SD card (camera) requires you to get up and hunt around on the back of the machine for the slot; Win box lets you stay seated

- inadequate number of USB ports; no ability to use fast USB - so, I have all these hubs lying around now

- mac superdrive requires a direct plugin - cannot use a USB hub

- keyboard with old style (solid keypress) requires a special adapter and takes up a USB slot

- mac keyboards are medium good re keypresses, but not good enuff for me

Good:
- mac magic mouse is very nice and use of gestures is great

- The mac is VERY quiet - very low fan or HDD noise!


Software:

Maybe the mac is OS is better somehow but I don't see any advantages. It also seems slow to me compared with what I did have.

Conversion of your mind to using different key combinations is a lot of trouble.

Migration of Wind MS Office to the Mac is poor - you will need to manually re-enter all your Autotext entries, sigs for Email & etc.

I miss having Irfanview also...

Those are just some of the problems...

Overall, the mac seems designed very prettily for graphic artists -- young ones with 12/20 vision, not for anyone else (who often have 20/30 or 20/40 vision).

maybe the mac IS better if you are not tech-savy & do a lot of work with pics or music (?) files; the cost over a PC is about $100-$200 for a comparably outfitted mini (I have extra RAM (4 Gbyte) and a 750 Gbyte HDD)

you can plug your old HDD into a new Win computer most likely - or into a drive sled and Xfer your files that way

Good Luck!