Again, I want to thank everyone who took the trouble to respond to my question. There were some really useful, thought provoking replies. It’s easy to forget just how incredibly useful this forum is and I think we should thank Michael for keeping it running the way he does.
So, is the grass greener? Well, for me it is (so far) but only by a little. I was due to upgrade my systems and that was a big factor. I bought the new Macbook Pro for location and tethered, and will get a Macpro tower in a couple of weeks.
The learning curve for the Mac way was/is not so bad as I expected. Sure, at times it’s frustrating, but once you find out how, it soon feels just as easy. Re speed: the Macbook pro (2.5, 2gb ram, maybe 4 soon) is about as fast as my PC (dual core, 2gb ram) so that’s ok for location work, but I expect the Macpro to be significantly faster. And now I’m getting the hang of it all, it does feel a slightly better, ie, more logical, way of working. But of course, I could be simply justifying the hassle and expense!
Adobe’s customer service team were most helpful and friendly, and the only cost for switching CS3 and LR was the minimal charge of shipping a couple of new DVDs. I’ll keep the old pc laptop, which still performs respectably, and probably also the desktop for some Windows apps. You get so little when selling it’s usually worth keeping the stuff as backup.
My “bottom line advice”: if your PC gear is working well and doing the job you want it to, it’s probably not worth the expense and learning curve to change. But if you’re ready to upgrade, I’d recommend the Macs.