Word processing
Spreadsheets
Make presentations
These are the areas not covered in a basic purchased Mac. Either run your old suite natively in Windows with 'bootcamp,' provided within the operating system or one of the neater, paid for, solutions like VM's fusion. About 50 quid I think.
Pilots being pilots just get a free download of OpenOffice Or Neo Office to run on the Mac OS. The Mac suite, iWork, costs 50 quid. That's not an education price but full retail. Family won't touch Word after 10 minutes using the compatible Mac equivalent, 'Pages.' Those Word users who get moist at the thought of creating a new macro won't like it.
Watch movies
View and edit photographs
Browse the internet
Send & receive email
All integrated in the basic installation. I use the one's supplied as my daily defaults with one exception.
Most road warrior Mac users do go for one particular add on for watching movies. VLC - highly recommended and free download. Open source and constantly updated.
Obviously there's a significant number of third party browsers as well with Firefox and Opera being popular additions to the one included. They're purely down to personal choice. We could debate the differences all day but they work - it's down to one feeling right for you. Our stats tell us that the vast majority stick with the built in one, just like PC users.
Same goes for mail - but folks are very different in how a mail system should look to them or out of habit are wedded in some way to webmail. Different strokes for each individual.
Rob