Hello there. Well, I must say that after doing a bit of research before purchasing the iMac and checking out the options for software etc, it has been pretty painless. I got used to the different ways of moving around a Mac very quickly and really look forward to using it when I get home from the mundane Windows environment at work!
Saying that, I did consult two excellent books during my progress and they undoubtedly helped me understand this new world much more easily. I have also referred to them both since making the switch, as I like to use keyboard shortcuts so am educating myself in the ways of the Command key and other new features as well.
The books are:
"Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard" by Robin Williams (excellent graphics and very clearly explained throughout)
"Switching to the Mac, Leopard edition" by David Pogue
I made one mistake. I tried to save $10 by using Thunderbird to export my Outlook email to it and then import that into the default Mail app that comes with the Mac. It seemed to work but then I noticed that quite a few emails were missing. In the end, I stumped up $10 and purchased O2M by Little Machines. This was very easy to use and successfully exported all my thousands of emails and contacts to the Mac without a hitch.
My next quandary was whether to shove all my photos (12,000+) into iPhoto. I didn't want to lose control so have retained my folder structure on the Mac and only copy across pics to iPhoto that I want to put into albums on the Apple servers with my .Mac account. To view, edit etc I use Bridge in Photoshop.
To run the one app that is simply not compatible with the Mac ('cos it's so old) I installed VMWare's Fusion and installed Windows XP on a virtual machine. It was simplicity itself to set up and keeps my old Sony Clie PDA still going strong.
All in all, I love the machine, the way it works and how it makes computing fun again. I am looking forward to learning so much more and am a complete convert.
To be honest, I don't think you will meet anyone who has bought a Mac and not been blown away by it, especially with this latest version of the OS.
If you have any questions, please feel free to PM me or carry on openly in this thread. There are many others in Pixalo who helped me make my decision and who could provide more experienced input than me, so that might be your best option.
Good luck - you know you'll make the right choice!
Lucy