Welcome to all the new Switchers. As a PC tech, I can tell you that you will gain about 20 minutes in the morning, when you first boot up. You won't know what to do with yourselves for the first few weeks. Thereafter, you'll find that you get to get in just that much more news, websites, funnies, etc.
As Annie so well put it "getting away with something". You are. Let me tell you that you have been brainwashed by the Windows world into thinking that you NEED them. Your computer wont LIVE without a myriad of protection. The great thing about the Mac platform is that out of the box, its ready to use. No antivirus, no antispyware to update, no windows pop up dialogs to answer. Just boot, or even better, resume from sleep, and work away.
My setup is pretty simple. I get up in the morning, get my coffee going, tap the spaceabar on my Apple keyboard and then go get my cup of coffee. When I come back, my Mac is up with my mail, ical, and firefox all up on the screen and ready to go. Only thing I have to wait for sometimes, like once a week, is my podcasts to update.
But being able to sleep, then come back and wake almost instantanious, is a godsend.
A few pointers:
Mac's do not need antivirus. You need an antivirus on a Mac only if you want to scan outgoing mail and files that are going to a PC contact. Its called the good neighbor effect. If you use your Mac for email and have an antivirus you'll scan emails and files that you would be resending, catching virus' as they appear.
As far as defrag, Macs do it on the fly, but there are some tools out there that do a "better" job. I say "better" because I have not seen any conclusive tests like they have for PC and Norton Disk doctor. Tools like tech tool pro deluxe and the like have that kind of capability built in and they say that they do a better job. Worthy of note is that all programs of this sort say the same thing. That they do a better job. I've been using a Mac, without such tools for 4 years now, and no ill effects. I do sugguest this method of working though.
Try just using the sleep fucntion at night. Wake in the morning. You can go for about 3 weeks without a reboot. You do need to reboot though. It runs clean up scripts in the background when you do. Reboot every once in a while. You'll realize just how much time was wasted of your life, sitting in front of a windows pc rebooting and starting. Its quite amazing.
As far as maintainence goes like scandisk and defrag, you dont really need to do it on a mac, but if you're going to, search the apple store online for apple recommened products. As it was said before , you dont really need it, but if it makes you feel good, knock yourself out.
So sit back, boot up and enjoy a stress free enviroment. It truely does take some getting used to.
Bishop
www.spaceage-computers.com