Hi, Paul-

The cost of *not* switching vastly outweighs the one-time cost to switch, IMO. I had my first programming job in 1979 and have programmed for environments from mainframes to embedded systems, including Macs, PC's and 5 commercial flavors of Unix. I put my first web site up in 1995 (including DNS, SMTP, NNTP, and security). I've also been the senior systems engineer for one huge eCommerce site.

I bought my first Mac in 1985 and have updated about every 10 years... currently using a Mac mini. And the Silicon Graphics O2, and the Sun Ultra 5 and the various flavors of Linux.

My opinion is that the Windows environment is fundamentally flawed in its system architecture such that it can never be as secure as Mac OS X (Unix-based) or Linux. Mac OS is the easiest OS for users that I have ever seen. It just works. Linux is coming of age, in terms of ease-of-use, but its learning curve is a bit steeper (I've had Linux systems at home since 1998).

Nothing "decent" has ever come out of Redmond's biggest software holding company, and nothing ever can or will. I mean, come on! Security breaks for surfing to a web site and viewing a maliciously crafted .jpg image?!? Or .pdf file?!? Windows security is a complete joke, one that's not funny at all if it's *your* bank account data that's on it.

whew. </rant>