IE & Outlook files to Mac

I did a couple searches and found a number of articles about my questions, but most of the relevant posts I found were pre lion so I wanted to see if there are any new answers.

I bought a new MacBook with the following specs and it should be delivered within the next 2 or 3 days (shipped from China yesterday):

•2.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
•8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
•256GB Solid State Drive
•8x Double-Layer SuperDrive
•MBP 17" HR Antiglare WS Dspl

I want to transfer my Outlook and IE data over to Mac Mail and Safari. I read where xmarks can be used to transfer IE favorites and was wondering if that's still the best option or can I simply backup my favorites etc from IE and restore them to Safari?

Will Mac Mail allow me to restore my pst file from Outlook or will I need some other 3rd party software?

You can download Thunderbird and install it on your Windows system. From there you can import the pst file, and then export it in a format usable by Mac Mail.