Inseparable, Windows PC & MBP?

I produce, create and perform music live as well as the usual contacts, surfing, IM stuff, and I also play games quite a bit. I really wanted to move over to Mac and I'm yet to find an aspect of the move I'm disappointed with.

In the music industry; Apple has become one of the standards, and for performance if you don't see a MacBook Pro / Powerbook up on stage, something is a little wrong! I create music using Ableton Live 7, and I'm currently writing a program under Jitter to do visuals for me too.

Even hooking it up to a TV proved nearly effortless. And to my delight I've found a few of the games I own install on PC and Mac so I've been playing around with that too!

I did initially install Vista Business 64bit to run a few windows benchmarks and the like, but after I'd don that I didn't really need it any more (that, and I got frustrated about how long it took to update!) so I removed it and have been using OS X ever since.

I write Windows software and I like Windows but I'm so tired of the garbage hardware that makes up 98% of the PC world. I like OS X too so I figured maybe it was time to bite the bullet and get a Mac, so that's what I did, an MBP. It's certainly pricey but so far it's worked far better than my last 3 PC laptops and I've gotten used to OS X pretty quickly. But I still have to write Windows software for a living and occasionally do something OS X simply can't do so I bought VMWare Fusion and it works perfectly. The best of both worlds, I figure, without having to choose between one or the other like Boot Camp. Granted, I don't do anything graphical which may be too much for Fusion, but it works for me.

my 2 cents.

I do composing and audio production work.

I switched from a full pro tools rig on PC to Logic on a 17" mbp over the course of about 2 months (started with a friends powerbook as an extended loan). I don't like having to maintain more than one machine for anything. I debated a mac pro, but like you I found it to be a bit overpowered and the thought of a portable studio struck me as something I've always wanted but never considered viable... and heck if I'm going mac, I'm going portable.

I had to give up a few treasured plugins that don't have mac equivs, but adaption is part of the game, it also forced me to rethink my workflow a bit. Finally took my own advice about not blaming or relying on the tools. I also learned much to my chagrin, just what OS most of my tools were made for.. some of the plugins I use didn't work so well UI wise in windows but made a lot more sense in the context of OS X... if that makes any sense.

Finder is a pain sometimes I'm not fully used to it, but there are ways to customize it that make it a bit easier to get around in, and being about to use a real bash shell to move things around manually makes up for it in my opinion.

When I *need* windows, which is never excepting games, I use bootcamp. This thing runs vista very well and while I'm not an avid gamer it keeps me happy and was a nice bonus. Oh wait I do use one mastering app in vmware fusion. runs great.

as for drives, I use external at home and whatever project I'm working on sits on the HD.

so yeah I lost some stuff, I had to learn some stuff, but in the end I gained a fully portable studio that replaced a very loud ugly PC that fought me every step of the way.. did I mention portable.. I mixed a track today at the beach. work.. at beach. work. beach.

I've got four computers. My Desktop I built has Vista Ultimate, I did this because I'm in the same boat as you, I wanted a mac desktop but the mac pro was too much (and too little at the same time) for me. $2600 (with education discount) with only 2GB of RAM? come on. for just over a grand I built one with 8GB of RAM, and still a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo thats plenty for me, I use RAM a lot more than CPU.

I've got the same laptop as you for all my mobile stuff and whatnot, I love it.
Then I've got two older Dells, an Optiplex with XP, and a D600 Latitude with Ubuntu. I'm a computer tech by trade so Its useful for me to keep up to date with all the current OSs.

I would have an OS X desktop if they made a headless iMac, but I have a 24" LCD thats better than the iMacs (DVI, VGA, Component, Composite, S-Video inputs) but they still don't have that and the mini isn't enough.