I’m going to The Indiana Academy for my junior and senior years in high school. At Indiana Academy (henceforce IA) all students are given a laptop, which they are supposed to use for class. I am almost through with orientation (I have a couple more hours I have to wait. And no, I’m not supposed to be doing something else. At 3:15, I will need to do stuff. Not until then.) and they have already given us the laptops. The laptops are Macs. This is my first time using a Mac. It’s…different. I don’t know that it’s better. I haven’t had it long enough to really decide.
That turned out a bit longer than I expected.
A friend gave me my first Mac – a disused purple iMac. It’s loaded with Panther, and I can connect to the Internet with it – but I’m still using my PC. (I need to re-install Windows, since it’s been acting up lately.)
A couple of weeks ago I got a new Apple PowerBook laptop computer. It’s loaded with Tiger, and we’ve put Final Cut Pro on it. I also picked up a 200gb external drive, so I have my very own portable editing studio now. Sweet! 
I’ve been using the PowerBook for browsing the Internet (including SDMB) while sitting in my comfychair. I’ve also spent many, many hours putting most of my CDs into iTunes on it, and loading up the iPod.
As you say, it’s… different. Faster than the PC, and its modem works a lot better. (The PC is always becoming disconnected.) But I still haven’t sussed the special characters, which on the PC is a simple matter of using the ALT key and the number pad. There’s a thread where someone gave me advice on how to do the same thing with the Control button on the Mac, but I forgot to bookmark it. Once I gt that down, I think I will basically be a Mac Guy.
Bus Kid has a Power Book, I have the Toshiba that comes with the job. I have a lot of chances to compare the functions of the two when she’s home from college in Ohio.
I tend to agree, once you get past the “feel” and the different icons and such, I like the way the Mac works much better. My I.T. people here are mac-a-phobes however, so this is how it’ll be for me for the future.
Once you go Mac, you never go back!
Congrats!