The benefits of moving to OSX (say: Oh Es Ten) and Macs are, amongst many others, these:

1. -Less noise. Your laserprinter or your external harddisk may still be buzzing, but to get a Macs internal fan to work really takes some doing. I love that! A loud PC or laptop fan really wears you out after a few hours, though most people don’t seem to realise that.
   

2. -Quick startup. With Windows, standby mode is hit-and-miss and hibernate takes ages. With a Mac notebook, all you do is open and close the lid. Standby mode is lightning fast and reliable.
   

3. -A great print/file server. Even when in standby, new Macs can handle incoming printjobs. Also, it’s far easier for Windows machines to connect to your Mac (assuming the Mac has the printer or even a scanner connected to it) with the help of Bonjour for Windows, than it ever was to use a Windows-to-Windows setup. Same goes for network drives hosted on your Mac.
   

4. -Less chores. You don’t really need to defragment a Mac (though in some cases, it fixes a problem - read the section on Bootcamp) and it carries out some automated maintenance tasks. Also, no need to keep track of a virusscanner. Even OSX has (fairly large) updates every now and then, but it’s less intrusive than Windows Update. (That being said, I did install the free Sophos Antivirus for OSX. It sometimes finds virusses in ancient zipfiles from when I used Windows, which are harmless on a Mac anyway.)
   

5. -Quick previews. Man I got used to that one fast. Select a file, hit ‘space’ and you get a preview. For instance, with a spreadsheet you can see what’s in it without opening the program. Also works with audio and video and it’s lightning fast!
   

6. -You’re safer. That’s all relative of course. Macs just don’t have the market share to attract many viruses and malware YET. Still, that doesn’t mean they’re impervious, although the foundations of Mac OS are Unix based and therefore a hell of a lot safer than Windows. You won’t need to install spywaresweepers or even a virusscanner, although that day will eventually come.
   

7. -Easier software installs and removals. Quicker, less questions, easier to remove... just better. (That being said, the free and excellent AppCleaner helps to remove software detritus even better.)
   

8. -Finder is like Windows filesearch on steroids. If you use Google Desktop on Windows, you’ll find you can do without it on a Mac. When you do, hit ‘space’ and get a free preview of the document or file.
   

9. -Free software. Macs come with iLife, which included iMovie (video editting), iWeb (very basic websitebuilder, I’m using it now), iPhoto (image manager, bit too basic for my taste), Garage Band (for musicians), a DVD player, iCal(ender, kind of an Outlook replacer for the home), iTunes (free for PC too, I know), iDVD (build interactive DVD’s for movies you’ve made with iMovie) and a few more utilities you’ll like. And all the big names (Open Office, Mozilla Firefox, the VLC-player, Vuze, uTorrent) have Mac-versions, don’t worry! You just never noticed them, because most websites can detect if you are using a Mac or a PC and will hide irrelevant software for you. Oh, while I’m on the subject of Vuze: it is brilliant and you should get it. Here is why.)
   

10. -TimeMachine is an application that drew me to the Mac but which I didn’t really trust at first. I felt that there HAD to be a catch. Well, there isn’t. If you have a TimeMachine drive connected to your machine, you’re covered. (Except that any sensible backup strategy also includes off-site backups. I use IDrive for Mac for my Documents folder.)
    

Of course, there are disadvantages too. But many of those can be fixed! Read on.