The local apple store was clearing out some MacBooks so I got one and upgraded the SRAM to 2G for a grand total of under $1100 which was less than I paid for the PC that died. I, too, had heard that Microsoft folks were running Vista off of Macs.
I'm going to try to find XP and get it on board, but I'll wait to see if I need to be parallel or not.
I pine for the days when I knew people who could build me computers I really miss the generic box ... and having WHAT I NEED, not a package. (However! Since these things are awfully culturally analogous to cars, why not make 'em look different? Tho' I think I'll take some markers to this one and have fun...)
Thanks for all the tips!!!