I would consider switching if I could use XP on a Mac. I can’t bring myself to buy a Vista machine.
Every Intel-powered Mac can run Windows - either as a straight-up Boot-Into-Windows system or through a Virtual Machine.
In fact, the fastest Windows laptop you can buy is the MacBook Pro.
Forgot to mention - Intel-powered Macs can and will happily run Windows Vista... XP... and even though it’s unsupported, 2000!
You can use XP on a Mac. I'm doing it right now. BootCamp is free, or you can run VMWare or Parallels if you don't want to reboot to switch.
When I'm building a Web page, I keep Windows open in Parallels. That way, I can test my pages in Safari, Firefox and Opera on Mac, IE and Firefox on Windows, Sometimes I test in Lynx and in Blazer on my Treo. If I had a screen reader for the blind, I'd try it. As a matter of principle, I believe in universality.
But Web testing is about the only thing I use Windows for -- everything else, I have a Mac app for. If you have custom apps that are only for Windows, you can run Windows on a Mac through the above methods; you can run a Windows box over RDC; or you can run a Windows environment over a server-based VM like Citrix. A lot of corporate IT departments prefer the latter, because they can roll out updates to everyone at once.
My PC running XP died last November. The only thing I could replace it with was Vista. I am not computer literate. My engineer husband and son love MS. But I wanted something I could use without having to get them to come help me every time. So there was no way I was going to buy a Vista machine.
I told my husband I wanted a Mac. We have three desktops and three laptops. The iMac my husband got me for Christmas was the first Apple computer we’ve owned. It took me a little time to get it running and integrated into our system, but aside from a problem the iMac had with our modem, I was able to set up everything on my own. That has never been the case with any of our Microsoft computers.
I have so much Microsoft software that one of the requirements I had for the iMac was that it run XP. I was able to dual boot the Mac with Boot Camp. I did this on my own with no help from husband or son. My husband was pleasantly surprised because he had never set up a dual booting system and did not think I could do it myself.
Now whenever I need to run a MS program, I boot up in XP without any problems. It even operates more cleanly on the iMac. I would occasionally have glitches on my XP PC but I haven’t had one problem with XP on my Mac.
Before the dual boot system, I tried Parallels. I could not get it to work properly. I would like to try VM Ware’s product because it would be nice to be able to access Windows programs without having to switch operating systems. I can access Windows based files like MS Word files and Excel files without having to boot up in Windows, but I can’t use the Windows programs themselves. I am hoping that VM Ware’s Fusion will solve that.
In my experience, XP works very well on the Mac. My husband, on the other hand, has been having all kinds of Vista problems. I guess it’s a good thing he’s an engineer.
I have a Macbook 2.4 Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of Ram that cost me less than $1400. I run it hooked up to a 22” monitor with a USB keyboard and mouse. I Run OS X 10.5.6 AND Parallels with Windows XP. XP runs faster on this machine than my old PC with 3 GB of Ram and an AMD 3000+ processor.
I never turn the PC on unless it is to do an update or play some game I have on it.
Also you can get Open Office from Sun Microsystems that will do all of the Microsoft Word, Power Point, Access, Draw etc that office/publisher will do. It will even save in MS formats. No need for XP for that one.