What to buy

Good day to you all. I'm new to your forum and have joined it to learn about Mac
systems. I have been involved in computers from the days of fortran, dbase 4 etc. I have always used a windows based system and generally don't have any issues other than the crap one must do to protect yourself. I use Mozilla as a browser and Rocket dock which is a nice program that a Mac developer made for windows. I believe that the Microsoft gang, are a bunch of %$2holes who have lost touch with reality and will manipulate any market to satisfy their needs.
With that said I have decided to explore the world according to Mac and am asking advice on what I should be purchasing in a notebook, how you all deal with the windoze world, etc. I have many MS office files that I still need to interface with; word,excel,power point, etc., etc. I also need to readily access any file that is sent to me, such as pdf's and auto cad files. I would particularly like to here the opinions of others who have walked this path B4 me.
Thanks for your time and expertise. Iain Gunn Ontario, Canada.

Make the switch, you'll be glad you did.I believe Open Office will handle most of the Word stuff you mentioned, and it's free.
I'm a recent switcher after 20 years of Bill Gates funny farm,been through countless upgrades, patches and crashes- I have the iMac 20", 2.4 gig machine and I love it.
Good Luck Van

PDFs will open perfectly in PREVIEW.
Office Docs can be converted in iWork but you can also get MS Office 2004. If you buy Office 2004 now, you get a free upgrade to Office 2008, which actually looks pretty sweet IMO.

AutoCAD is harder. You can still run it in an XP virtual machine. If you get Vmware Fusion, you can even have an AutoCad icon on your OSX dock which will launch the virtual machine in the background so that you only see your application.

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think there is a way to import autoCAD files into other Mac applications. Perhaps SketchUP pro from Google will work?