As of May 15, 2008, I have switched to the Apple camp. Yes, that is what I mean. Yes, I am now a Mac user. Here are the specs with a few added on specials:

15.4″ MacBook Pro with Multitouch
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (Penryn)
2 GB PC5300 DDR2 RAM
200 GB Hard Drive
nVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT with 256 MB VRAM

22″ NEC Widescreen display
Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse
Apple Keyboard

Even with the awkwardness of getting used to OS X’s interface, I have found that Apple has indeed made their product remarkably user friendly. Not only is Leopard’s Aqua UI stunningly beautiful, so many processes occur without you knowing when you’re setting stuff up that you almost feel that it knows exactly what you want. Yes, I have had an application crash a few times, but compared to Windows, OS X Leopard is very resilient. Moreover, it does so much for you but it is still so fast. I have installed Quicksilver, the ever-handy keyboard-oriented launcher application, but it does not at all seem to drag the system.

On a small sidenote, I have setup Boot Camp and thus have a OS X Leopard and Windows XP dual-boot setup. Though the ingroup bias extant with being a Mac user is developing quickly, I still need Windows for some purposes. However, I have found that many of the hardware features (like multi-touch and my bluetooth mouse) do not work well with XP. There are certainly at times more steps needed to set up things in Windows when compared to Leopard. But in any case, at least everything works great for the time being.