On 25 Jul 2005, at 10:56 pm, Tim Steele wrote: > But you do get something for your money - the bundled software > suite is really good and if you just want something that you can > plug in and use without endless worries about viruses and spyware > then a Mac could be your best option. Office is available and costs > about the same as the PC version (and the document format is the > same so you can exchange documents with the office). If you work > for the NHS you can get it free for Mac or PC. The file formats are *similar* but not the same. The latest version of Word on the PC can create documents that Office Mac 2004 cannot read, for example. Similarly, Powerpoint is beset with compatibility problems; in order to maintain competitiveness with Apple's Keynote presentation software (which is fabulous, IMHO) Microsoft added a bunch of features to Powerpoint on the Mac which don't exist on the PC version (and won't do for some time, given that they rely on the nature of the Mac's Quartz rendering engine, some features of which just don't exist in Windows yet). This has got so severe in the 2004 version of the software that they've even added a wizard to the Mac version to tell you which features you've used won't work on the PC version of PowerPoint. > >> Next year all Apple machines will be based on Intel CPU's and will >> almost certainly be able to run Windows (although they'll of course >> ship with Mac OS) so it'll be even easier to switch should you be >> tempted next time you replace your machine. >> > > Remains to be seen whether Apple will do that. Frankly, if you want > Windows, buy a PC. I think Apple have already said that they will let Windows run on their Intel Macs. What they won't do is the reverse, and release Mac OS X for normal beige PCs (even though I dare say it would be trivial to do) Tim -- Dr Tim Cutts Informatics Systems Group, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute GPG: 1024D/E3134233 FE3D 6C73 BBD6 726A A3F5 860B 3CDD 3F56 E313 4233