Wow, what a great story! Way to chronicle it! And welcome to the fold!
Yeah, the more I play with OS X the less I like XP. My only real gripe is that I can't afford to buy everyone in my family a Mac!
Man, that must have been tough passing up the W3j. I *was* going to hold out for that laptop but decided to go a seperate route. If you're serious about learning OS X, I recommend picking up "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition" by David Pogue.
link It's a great book on OS X, very easy to read, and has helped me a lot on my transitition. They also have a Missing Manual for switchers, but I found the straight OS X version to be better after comparing them at the local bookstore.