Thinking of buying a macbook pro 13"

Hi all

I have several computers in the house, with Ubuntu and Arch linux being my primary operating systems although I do have Vista for gaming reasons.

I am considering a new laptop for Christmas and am very tempted by the Macbook Pro 13".

I have a few questions that I would appreciate your comments with.

Does OSX come with a messaging client? I use MSN to chat with friends on occasion.

I don't really want to pay extra for an office package, I use open office on my linux machine, is this an option or would you recommend something else?

Does OS X come with a CD and/or DVD burning kit, or would you recommend something else?

Does OS X come with a bittorrent client, or would you recommend something else?

What is boot and shutdown time like?

i don't really have any intention of gaming on the macbook but has anyone used Football Manager on theirs as I would like to should I purchase one?

I use GIMP to do basic image editing, does OS X come with something comparable, or would you recommend something else?

And finally will I be able to access my Linux and/or windows machine over my network, will I be able to read/write to NTFS and EXT4 file systems?

I appreciate I have many questions and that I probably could google this but I would appreciate comments from real world users.

Many thanks for reading my post.

Darren

OSX comes with iChat, which only works with AIM. If you want to to use MSN there is a version for Mac. Personally I use Adium because it can connect to so many different chat clients and is highly customizable with various plugins.

OpenOffice for all your office needs.

Comes with Disk Utility. There are other CD/DVD burning software but I never ever had the need to use anything other than what came with my Mac.

Does not come with a torrent application. Need to download. Transmission would be my first choice, followed by utorrent. There are others I'm sure. Just google it.

Start up depends on your hardware specs, mainly your HDD. You can expect boot up to take 20-30 seconds. Shut down takes 1-5 seconds.

Can't comment on the football manager thing.

There is gimp for Mac too.

Yes to network, and yes you can read NTSF can't write to NTSF without this, or something similar.

Many thanks

Osx has a messenger cliet called ichat, but you can get msn messenger for free.

you can burn dvds and cds using itunes and imovie. Also you can use the os for it also.

Transmission is the best bittorent program imo.

Startup is like 15 seconds, shutdown is like 5

Yes you can get open office for free on the mac. Also you can just pay for one piece of office if you only need one program out of it.

I have gimp on my macbook right now. So yes you can get gimp.

Not to sure about the linux/windows file writing. I believe you can do it but you may want to look up in google for that one.