You don't have to search too far back to find posts by me querying if a Mac could be as good as the faithful claim, but after a year with one I really can't overstate how good I think they are as a general purpose computer. If all you want are the general tasks - internet, email, music, photos + video, word processing, that sort of thing - then it's a revelation. If you've got specialist software needs, like tweaking the hardware or are a dedicated games player, then it's probably not for you.
I have MS Office on the Mac, and have never had any problems with sharing files with Windows. Likewise, it just figured out the Windows LAN and connects to shared drives etc. without problems.