If I need to send a file to a friend who uses a PC, I can save it in an appropriate format from almost any application. So, moving to the Mac allowed me to preserve my thousands of hours invested in letters, reports and spreadsheets I had created in Windows. Since I can use the same files on both machines, there was no reason to stick with the environment that gave me so many headaches. He was right. It is like a club, a club with very enthusiastic members who write really good software and then give it away for free over the Internet.
Macintoshes are a huge force in academic computing, and so is the Internet.
The result is that there are tons of really cool Internet utilities available for the Mac. My Power Mac hops right on to the InfoBahn, and zips me where I want to be. Beyond Net tools, there is a vast wealth of terrific Mac shareware available. People didn't want to wait for Lotus or Symantec to write software, so they did it themselves. If you need a tool to do a job, a bit of digging on the Net will find the right tool, and a few other cool things you might not have heard of before.