Last night I drove 60 miles round trip to the Apple Store for their 6 PM to Midnight sale-a-thon. I have NEVER used anything Apple (except Quicktime for Windows).
What amazed me was the cross-platform tools they had...You can run Win 98, Win ME, Win 2000, and Win XP if you absolutely must run PC specific software on a Mac.
My goal is to acquire one this coming year and avoid Gates-Games (Palladium, TCPA, 'Fritz Chips', and, of course, Longhorn).
I will retain my three PC's for doing legacy stuff, as well as backup untill I can evaluate the above mentioned cross platform products.
And, late next year, probably get Linux dual booted on said PC's
I stopped messing around with dual boot on my latest machine and went instead with removable hard disk drive bays. It is much cleaner that way, and I don't run the risk of letting a partition editor mess up an innocent partition!
This is always my biggest concern. I have programs and data in files that date back to DOS 3.1 that are absolutely essential. Most of those old software companies that issued these are defunct for many years (so the "contact your software vendor" stuff is ridiculous). Converting to XP cost me several programs (non essentials, but does anyone know how to get Duke Nuke'm to work under xp?), and several hundred dollars (and about a thousand hours) in various upgrades and other difficulties. I'm hard pressed to consider another 'improved' operating system as worthwhile.