Naples and Collins... absolute typical bolleaux ref the Mac. It is just typical of people who have no idea about the Mac to spout off those figures such as
"...I look at a Mac as, a car that cannot drive on 80% of the roads" or
"Macs are fine provided that your never going to run any 'out of the ordinary' specialist software." It shows me that you have been force fed the usual diatribe by the deperately embarrased PC users brigade who are afraid to admit that the Mac is good because they have such a limited capability, run of the mill, "I follow the sheep" windoze PC!
Yes, there are one or two specialist programs such as the flight logging ones you mention that are not available for the Mac OS but so what? All you need is Virtual PC for the Mac and you can run any PC package you already have in a seperate window, including all the 'specialist' ones mentioned. Better still though, use some specialist programs available ONLY for the Mac! Virtual PC creates exactly what it says on the box. You have to load your version of Windoze up to and including MX but then it emulates a PC but with all the facilities of the Mac that are plugged into it.
I remember when Flight Sim from MS was ONLY available for the Mac as was Photoshop, Pagemaker, Illustrator and all those other famous packages. The fallacy that the Mac is somehow only 'specialist' for artsy graphics people needs to be dispelled as it is only bandied about by people who refuse to admit they wish they'd bought a Mac in the first place!
I can honestly say that every person I know who has moved from a PC to the Mac has said that they will never go back to using a PC. These are not luddites who know no better but long time users of Windoze systems and specialist users. The few who migrated the other way have also said how they regret the move and will be not be purchasing a Windoze PC next time they fork out.
I admit a certain amount of 'evangelism' for the Mac and I even used to work for an AppleCentre but that is because I have been using Macs since the first 128k one came out. I still have that original!
When I was working for the AppleCentre, and I'm going back to the late 80's, I was involved with selling them into universities and larger corporations. I saw Macs being used in extremely specialist environments because the PC's were just not good enough and none of it was your run-of-the-mill word processing/spreadsheet/database stuff.
5milesbaby, having checked out the Mac, I hope you can have another go. Preferably try out one at a dedicated Apple dealer where the sales person knows what they are talking about and knows how to demonstrate the superb functionality. You'll get good advice on here from most people but beware of the 'nuggets' of disinformation that are occasionally thrown about by people who may not be aware that they have been duped.
Caveat emptor.