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Jam as much RAM in as you can.

Go to Costco and buy two of the highest-capacity bus-powered USB hard disks you can find. Use these in alternating fashion with Time Machine to keep your new little beauty backed-up.

I disagree with other posters’ recommendation of Parallels. If you must run Windows-only software, VMWare Fusion is a more solid choice, IMHO. But only if you need it. (A big advantage of running Windows in a virtual machine is that your Windows instance will be backed up by Time Machine. Time Machine won’t touch a Boot Camp partition. But, if you’re into heavy Windows gaming, Boot Camp gives your Windows installation 100% of your machine’s resources.)

Enjoy!

I really like Apple’s office suite, iWork. While not 100%-compatible with MS Office, iWork is much easier to use. I find that I can generate all the Office documents I need much more easily in iWork and then export them to .doc, .xls, .ppt, or .pdf format as needed.

Occasionally, when I need to modify an existing MS Office document, I may have to use MS apps to keep the formatting exactly the same, although Open Office (free) is another option.

Do it.

But spend the extra bucks and buy a MacBook Pro. You won’t regret it.

If you are doing lots of MS Office work only for yourself and your own needs, you needn’t bother with Parallels or VMware Fusion (the latter being the one I use). But if you are in an office environment providing work product for others who are on PC, you might be better off using it. There are always annoying formatting issues — animations, fonts, chart labels, table sizes, etc.— that go awry when going from one platform to the other. If you’re providing a Microsoft work product for a client who is on Windows, it’s best to author the work in a Windows environment. This is far less true of design/layout applications such as those in the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.). I’ve never had any problems with them going from one platform to the other, whereas I find there are always problems with Microsoft applications going from Mac to PC or vice-versa.

I have lots of experience with Office 2003/2004 and 2007/2008; I have little experience with Office 2010, but I have been told by others that many of the cross-platform issues have been ironed out.

We’ll see.

Anyway, I made a necessary and long-overdue switch from PC to Mac for graphics and video, working mainly on an iMac (which has been trouble-free for almost four years) and recently acquired a MacBook Pro to give myself greater mobility with certain clients.

If you get a MacBook Pro, VMware (to run Windows 7) and MS Office 2010 (which would run on Windows) you will have a great deal of flexibility.

I made the switch three years ago and never looked back. I used to be a heavy Windows user and I always had to clean the damn thing up twice a year. Now I don’t clean it at all because I haven’t gotten a virus, I don’t run a firewall, and my Mac is used by five people in my household and STILL runs as fast as the day I got it. Now I’m switching my parents over to Macs as well, so they won’t need me to come over to repair their computer as much, not that I mind coming over. ;)

Two things that will keep you sane in your switch is this: buy one from a Mac store and ask one of the sales people there how to do a double click on a track pad (very easy) and function + delete equals forward delete. Also if you’re on a budget a plain Mac Book will do, I love the Pros, but I can’t afford one right now. However on a plain Mac Book users get an awesome experience and I use the Mac for graphics, work and heavy Internet use.

You may pay more for a Mac, but you get more, I have a friend who’s a techie and he told me the parts that go into your Mac are better quality than many PCS, also because you save on computer repair – the investment more than pays for itself.

And remember “Once you go Mac – You don’t go back!” :)