[davo11]

Think about the software too. I see you use Adobe CS3 and MS Office, so you'll have to buy new licenses of each of these, unless you're running them in a VM.

I looked at moving to a Mac just like you are and after looking at the hardware and software costs, I could by myself a separate linux server as well as a new PC for about the same price as a Mac. You're also limiting yourself in the hardware you can buy by using a mac, no more upgrading the video card if you feel like it, or getting a $40 digital TV receiver, no more plugging in a RAID array on the weekend, the number of third party accessories is smaller and there a lot more expensive. Also the amount of free utilities for the Mac is a lot less (I use a bunch of little free PC utilities, that have seeped in over time, and would take a lot of time to replace). I have 2 monitors at the moment and thinking of getting a third - can the Mac support a third? not sure. There's a lot you take for granted in the PC world that you give up if you move to the Mac world. The Mac hardware is a closed proprietry system and all the negatives that come with that are there, but I do agree it's nice and shiny and I just want to touch them :-).

So I'm buying a little Mac laptop to play with (officially for the kids) and keeping my development on PC's. If you want to dip your toes (to see what all the hoo ha is about) the Mac mini could be an option too. hth.

[creativeembassy]

Let's be honest, you will NOT want to run CS3 in a VM. Image processing requires full use of your RAM and CPU.

[davo11]

That was probably my point moving to a Mac from a PC is a large investment, you'd need to have very good reasons to do so. Personally I spend so much time in applications/ide's that the OS really doesn't matter much.