Is it worth switching to a Mac?
ghshephard: It's really difficult to tell in advance whether a Mac or Windows System will serve you better, though your list of software is a good start - no AutoCad, Visio, Outlook or other platforms lockins.There are three software tools that have kept me chained to Windows XP:o Visio (Yes, I know OmniGraffle, but it's a Visio world where I work. I have a reasonably recent MacBook Pro with Maxed out RAM - but it still is a little laggy - and the controls just don't work the way my finger memory expects them to on a Mac) - Which is pretty mandatory if you do a lot of network diagrams.o Outlook Calendar - Entourage / booking resources - just didn't have it nailed last time I checked it out.o Lookout - Spotlight/Mail search isn't horrible - but when I need to search for a keyword or two in 145,000 email and get an answer back in 1/10th of a second - Nothing beats Lookout.  I use it 20 times a day.  It truly is the google of mail searching (Ironically Google's Outlook index isn't that impressive)With that said, I absolutely love the MacBookPro - best laptop I've ever owned.  And, I spend my entire day in a terminal - and, you may mock me for saying this, but I personally have decided the cost of OS X and a good portion of the Macbook is justified by the terminal client alone.  It puts Putty/SecureCRT to shame.So - my solution has been to do both - I have the two keyboards (probably ergonomic nightmare) - one in front of the other, and do all my visio/lookout/outlook calendar on my five year old Precision 650 (Rock Solid workstation BTW), while Everything else is done on the MacBook Pro.   Two monitors - a cheap 20" LCD for the Precision 650 and a 30" Dell for the MBPro.I have zero issue switching back and forth - when I'm on the mac, Command-Space comes as natural to me as Ctrl-Escape does when I switch back to the windows system.