Moving from Windows Lap Top to Mac Book Pro, i gotta do it ......

Question

My missus dragged me into an Apple Store yesterday, she is itching to get an iPad2, the rest of the store was full of Mac computers, they are so LOVELY and so easy to use, beautifull in every way, so for £1500 + i can get a MacBookPro, but how much of my Windows Software and Hardware would i have to throw away ?.
Will my External USB Hard drives still work ? and what about my Fave Windows software, like MS Office, and how about Torrent files that i have been downloading with free software like Bit Torrent, can i still do that ?.
It looks as if the Mac uses APP's not programs, i do hope they are a lot cheaper to buy than the Windows 7 OS and/or MS Office etc.
I can be very tempted to be converted, but i would prefer it if i didnt splash out loads more money on hardware/software.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
And it will be easier for a Mac to talk to my wifes iPad2 when she gets it, hopefully before christmas !!.
tim

Answer 1

Your external drive will work, either formatted as native HFS+ (Apple's file system) or FAT32. You can even use NTFS but will not be able to write to it, just read from it. Most of your peripherals should work fine, unless they are really, really, old in which case there may not be drivers for the most recent OS X version (old printers, scanners, for example).
Windows executable programs will not run in OS X. You can however, run windows, either from a dual-boot setup, or from a virtual machine (e.g.e with VMWare Fusion or Parallels). So, if you need OS X native MS Office, you would have to buy that new, and it's just as expensive from MS as it is for windows. You can also use OpenOffice (free) or Apple's own iWorks.
Bit Torrent works on Apple machines, but if you have downloaded applications, then again they won't run natively on OS X (an Apple app is just an OS X compiled executable program - analogous to an *.exe file in windows). Cost of commercial apps is going to be much the same - photoshop for OS X is no cheaper than photoshop for windows and that will be true for most commerial applications available for both platforms.
Message was edited by: Michael Black
Message was edited by: Michael Black