Hi,
I have the iMac 27" and it was my first Mac. I have had it for about 9 months now and it has been great. I have Photoshop on it and it works great. The screen is excellent for photo editing. As for productivity software, pretty much all of the stuff you would use with Windows is available in Mac or there is an alternative that is very close. I used to use both Microsoft Office and Word Perfect suite on my PC and now I use iWorks on my iMac and really like it for both a spreadsheet and for word processing. I actually like using Safari as my web browser and have installed it on my Dell XPS400. My dell is older, but it had a duocore processor so it is still good to use with Autocad. Given the price for new licenses on that baby, I don't plan on buying it for the Mac, but it is actually available for the Mac platform now. I just ordered my son a Macbook for Christmas. That's how impressed I am with the Mac OS and Apple computers. They seem expensive, but when you compare them with a Dell or other PC with the same features, you end up paying just as much. My XPS400, with dual HD's a CD and DVD burner as well as a Duocore 2.86 GHZ processor was $1,400 four years ago. So a good PC is no cheaper then a Mac. It is just that Apple doesn't make any 'cheap' budget machines. If you are afraid of a learning curve, don't be. You will get used to the Mac operating system in no time. Also, Apple loads everything you order on your machine before shipping it. With the iMac, you just plug the power cord into the monitor assembly, insure batteries are in the keyboard and mouse, then turn on the mouse and computer and it fires right up. Boot time for my machine, from a complete shut down, is 40 seconds. At that time I can open any program or go online. No more waiting 2 - 3 minutes just for Windows to load, then waiting forever for all the start up programs to load. Believe me, you'll fall in love with that 27" screen and how smoothly the OS-X Snow leopard operating system works. I have locked up a program only four programs in 9 months. In each case I was able to just shut down that program and continue on. In the Windows environment, such reliability is unheard of.