I have Microsoft Office on Vista and Adobe CS4 on the Mac. If you need Office, I'd recommend the Mac version unless you really need Access. Access is a Windows-only application. The obvious advantage would be that using the Mac version would keep you from needing to switch to Windows. The less obvious reason for using the Mac version is that for some odd reason, Microsoft has a history of producing better Mac software than Windows software. That's weird; the only logical explanation that I can think of is that their Mac and Windows products have separate development teams. It's just so much more user friendly the mouse gestures make me do everything faster. I can't stand track pads on a PC, but the one on my macbook is super convenient. For sure. The whole trackpad is a button. It should be noted, though, that pressing on the bottom half of the trackpad is easier. You can program one of the bottom corners of the trackpad to right-click. I find that totally unnecessary because tapping with two fingers already causes a right-click. If you place your cursor over a window, moving two fingers on the trackpad will cause the window to scroll. You can scroll vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Also, if you hold down the control key and scroll with two fingers, the entire desktop, including the windows, will zoom. Scroll up to increase the size; scroll down do decrease size back to normal. There's also a two-finger "pinch." Within certain applications, you can pinch out to zoom the contents of the window and pinch in to bring it back to normal size. A three-finger swipe will navigate you through iPhoto. A vertical four-finger swipe will activate Exposé. Swipe up to clear your desktop; swipe down to display all windows. A four-finger horizontal swipe brings up a handy application switcher. There are some one-finger options that aren't turned on by default. I think these generally correspond to what's available on Windows computers: tap to click, tap and drag, and drag lock. I haven't played with those, but I think I'll try them. Dragging is a bit of a pain under the default settings. You need to hold down the button and drag. There are times that you need two fingers. What's really cool is that if you want to see how the trackpad options operate, all you have to do is visit the Trackpad control panel in System Preferences. Hover over the preference listed in the control panel, and it'll show a movie demonstrating what the preference does. If you go with a mac, I'd recommend Apple Care. You have one year from the date of purchase to activate Apple Care. Your repairs are covered for the first year, but tech support only lasts for the first three months. If you don't need tech support between months three and twelve, you can delay for the full year. If you need tech support during that time, buy Apple Care at that point. Contrary to the snarky commercials, Vista isn't that bad. We've certainly had a lot of bad Vista reports here at Brewerfan. However, I think a lot of Vista's bad rap came because Microsoft was selling it to customers whose computers weren't equipped to handle it. Also, I don't think computer manufacturers initially understood that new machines needed 3 GB of RAM for it to run properly. While these issues seem to have been addressed with time, in the beginning, they certainly opened up an unanticipated marketing opportunity for Apple.