[jyl]

Going from PC to Mac has a learning curve. If you are a techie at the OS level and like getting down into the weeds on your PC, manually editing Registry and processes etc, then you'll feel limited until you become equally techie at Mac. If you are a techie with particular applications, then it will depend on how the PC vs Mac versions of the application are. Usually for videos, music etc the Mac applications are just as powerful as the PC versions. If you are a regular user, then learning curve is pretty short - a week or two.

Hardware pros and cons depends on what you get - Mac mini vs MacPro, etc. Hard to think that an inexpensive powered 8 port USB hub wouldn't solve all of RWebb's problems. On the PC side, I think some of the OEMs are making real junk today. The HP notebooks we got at work all failed in 3 years (I mean out of a couple hundred, 90% died - I went through three). The Dell notebooks that replaced them have battery life of maybe 3 hours, its like going back to 2000. On the other hand, the IBM desktops are great, and the Lenovo laptops were also fantastic machines.

I use Macs at home and PCs at work. I have a lot more problems at work, need tech support's intervention about 3X year, at home things run pretty smoothly.

The one area where I find Macs not so smooth is with printer support. It isn't worse than PC, but after you are used to Macs, it is weird that you plug into something and then have to "install drivers" for it to work. I tend to throw a hissy fit.