Apple Macintosh Continues to Gain Popularity in U.S. Retail

Absolutely agree here, but you look at it from a perspective where you start with windows and want to integrate Mac users.

Look at it the other way 'round for a minute : say we have a large business using Macs and want to integrate windows users : a lot easier than the other way 'round.

Of course, then we get to the ever-present software argument: this is the chicken and the egg problem : all major software is available on the Mac, but when you get to developing new soft (the programmer you talk about), most is developed for windows and thus mostly on windows machines (and rightly so in that respect). As long as windows is the primary os, these things will not change.

However, for all large businesses NOT into developing software, this argument is not valid : they can build their company around Mac OS as well as Windows. It's just a transition from Windows that will never happen as integration is indeed too difficult.

like it or not, Windows is the standard for the majority of businesses out there; a smaller company can get away with using linux/mac OSX, once you near a certain amount of different clients with different requests, your options become a lot more limited and Windows OS is flexible to meet the requests from both a programmer as a sales person to a load tester to an administrator.

On the other hand, for home networks or small business networks it can't get any better than OSX, even more so since Leopard. My Macs recognise any pc or mac in the network instantly and you're just 2 clicks (and a password) away from connecting. It used to be more difficult with Tiger and before (all this "connect to server BS", but now it works perfectly in my humble opinion.

By the way : the guys you talk about can run windoze on their Macbooks normally, so it should work that way. Of course, that's the whole point

none-networked small business then
living proof @ work in Brussels were two guys insist on using their Macbook, they can't run any of the company software on it, can't fill out their holidays, approve requests, use the company's main program (which they sell to clients) etc. very nice

You were quick to discover the mosaic screen saver It's cool indeed but you get tired of it after a while.

Driver installation for OSX86 can be a pain indeed, as OSX is not intended for use on different hardware than Apple provides. However, for most aspects there is a solution. The insanelymac forums are an excellent wiki for all driver related issues.

Enjoy your new PC John

PS: I use OSX professionally as well, actually mainly professionally, no reason to limit it for home use. It's stable as hell, even on X86, there's just some digging and general knowledge required to get it to work...

Mosaic screensaver is impressive

the OS visuals are functionally cool compared to uselessly bloated with Vista.
driver install however can be a PITA; if they invest money in that I'm sure they will push a lot more copies of OSX Leopard used on whatever PC than Vista for home users

Good boy See, no guide needed

now you've done it, running OSX Leopard :/

tsss kids and work, where are you priorities, Mac is cooler than both!

The dude is busy, will get to it asap

Thorgal where is that Hackint0sh article dude