Switching to Mac from PC

Hello everybody! Sure you can help me...

I've been a PC user for 8 years. And now I am going to try Mac. But I am sure that still I couldn't dismiss some of my favourite Windows apps. Can I keep the opportunity to use them working in OS X?

What applications are we talking about

dual boot? running a virtual machine?

downloading something similar on the mac?

which apps are you talking about?

If you plan on buying the an intel macs (all macs are now intel), you have 2 options:

1) Install windows using boot camp. Then at startup you would have the option to boot into Windows or OS X

2) There are programs that allow windows to run within OS X.

The main problem (or task) for me Is to get used to Mac's apps. While I'm getting used I still need Windows. And I'm sure I will need it further... I've heard that most of Windows games won't run in OS X...

To clarify, I work with popular Windows apps, not peculiar or specific ones.

I'm going to purchase an Intel Mac, rather powerful one... 2Gb RAM, Intel 2.5 Ghz

For daily tasks, there is often a mac app comparable that works just as well if not better than a windows app (may take some getting use to though).

For creative stuff (video/photo/audio production), i woluld recommend a mac due to imo the same if not a better selection of available software to choose from.

For games, youre outta luck. Mac gaming has always been behind (quite a bit) and its still like that. Although, its starting to turn around (EA is releasing many games for os x) it could be a very long time until macs comparable to PCs gaming wise.

Also, dont buy ram from apple (anything more than stock). Its overpriced. Buy your own ram from newegg or somewhere else and install it yourself. Easy to do, saves quite a bit of money.

you can run your windows software with this, actually codewavers works better on mac and is stable, it actually is better than when running on linux but software is limited, as for games Epidemik pretty much summed it up.
But you have CIDER for games, i got Vice city working, actually a vice city installed on a win machine, but it's very difficult to use.

Well, let me list a number of apps I'm going to use on my Mac:

1) Outlook

2) Internet Explorer

Probably I can easily switch to Mac's analogues of this 2 apps if there are some. I'm sure there are.

3) Auto Cad

4) Corel Draw, Photoshop

5) Microsoft Office apps (PPoint, Access, Project, OneNote Word, Excel). I'm not sure that I could dismiss this apps and use some another similar Mac's ones.

1) Mail (Free with os x) or you can get Office for mac
2) Safari (Free with os x) imo better than IE. You can also get firefox.
3) Never heard of this...Looks like modeling? Sorry can't help there.
4) Photoshop is availible on mac. I think Corel is too but not sure
5) M$ Office apps are availible for mac. Open office is a free alternative.

I think you'll love your mac.
Have fun. Hope all goes well.