[CD1212]

I have found there to be positives of each although I love my mac for 99.9% of daily usage.

The straw that broke the camel's back in my switch was Rails development, which I just found impossible on windows. I had a mess of msys, msysgit, cygwin, and the default ruby installed which meant a simple bundle install took more than 3 mins.

You have to be open minded when switching to be able to fully appreciate the differences.

[chaz]

This was my change agent, too. I could finally stop diagnosing install issues and focus on development. Cygwin was great for me from ~2003-2006, but with Intel chips + VMware or Parallels, I could get the right development and not give up Windows Excel or Windows Outlook (even today, the Mac versions of those both pale in comparison), which were still essential for me.