Mac or PC, advice please!

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My boss has given me the ok to get a new computer. It is primarily to work with images from a confocal laser scanning microscope so needs to have excellent graphics card and a lot of RAM. I will be using Bitplane Imaris software.
Until coming here I have always used PCs but the other computers here are all Mac. I use my PC laptop alot and am frustrated that so many programmes don`t seem compatible across the two systems but maybe this is because it is old.
I want to be as compatible as possible with everyone else so am I best to get a Mac or a new PC?
Which is likely to do the best job with the image work and how compatible are new Macs and PCs with each other these days?
I am grateful for any advice.
Thanks.

There isn't a mac version of Bitplane Imaris.

They just made one

http://www.bitplane.com/products/imaris ... eMAC.shtml

The new Intel Mac's can run Windows as well (and there very fast)

I am definitely getting a Mac for my next computer.

Tim

"hardware follows software".

First, what kind of image work will you be doing?

Second, check the system requirements of the program(s) you need.

What's the budget?

Mac and PC programs are not compatible in the sense that you can't install a Mac program on a PC. Also the inverse is true.
And as iceb said, you can install Windows in a mac/macbook, but you'll most surely need a second hard disk to fomat it and install Windows there.

Graphic cards: there are laptops and PCs with Nvidia Quadro cards, or Geforce ones. Quadro cards are special for 3ds max and other high end graphics programs.

Also, go for at least 1 GB in RAM, and a Core 2 Duo processor.

Oh, by the way, PC laptops are cheaper than macbooks: you can get a Toshiba Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz with a Quadro card for about $1,3000. Or use the same amount to buy a macbook with a generic graphic card.

ITS OVER 9000!! !! !

Get a Mac, i have one and its great, i use windows on it some of the time and that works great aswell, in achuall fact it is designed for multimedia/3D stuff so ive heard and it works for me

macs are overpriced paperweights.

And PCs are over weight paperweights.
Besides Mac's have more in them.

For graphics, you definitely want the
Mac; it's the industry standard.

Then by all means get one, especially if that's what everyone else uses. OSX is a vast improvement over Windows even for advanced users. Compatibility depends on what data you need to exchange between machines. With the exception of WinSPICE all the programs I need have mac versions and the format of the individual files conforms to a standard that is the same across both platforms.

Mac Pros support up to 16GB of memory and you can add a NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 which is an industrial video card.

Minium Specs:
CPU: AMD Athlon x2 4000+ or Intel Pentium D 925
RAM: 2 Gb recommended, but 1 Gb minium (stay away from 512 mb, otherwise you are scrapping the ocean floor)
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium (or wait till OS Lepord comes out)
Hard Drive: 250 Gb
Primary Optical Drive: DVD burner (cheap enough to get and it will come in use some day)
Secondary Optical Drive: not necessary but nice to have
Media Card Reader: not necessary but nice to have
Graphics: NONINTERGRATED! get at least a dedicated video card, its worth it for anything except solitare
Sound: intergrated is fine
Monitor: you choose, but i like 19inch widesceens and bigger
AGP Slots: if no PCI 16x get at least 1 of these, probally 2 (for dual graphics cards)
PCI Slots: you will need at least 2, and computers usually come with a dial up card installed, take it out for more room
PCI 1x Slots: 1 is good for tv tuners
PCI 16x Slots: need at least 1, for a graphics card upgrade, preferbally 2 for dual cards, and 3 for 2 cards and a phyx accelerator.

I have used both PC's and Macs, though not for scanning microscope images, and I think Mac are better for most things. I would like to say most but I am not super sure, so I will say a very high amount of artists and the like that deal with imaging and the arts of all sorts use Macs. I find they are so much easier to use and I love the support because you can always go down to the Mac store and they can figure things out most of the time or just replace anything. With PC's it is always a wild goose chase if anything goes wrong and you always end up paying a fortune for some jerk to move a file around or something.

so yeah, I would suggest a Mac.

hmm
i might be telling you what you already know but i guess you will be looking for an Nvidia quadro(NOT A GEFORCE!! !!), i would say 4GB RAM and a modest duel (or quad) core CPU, not entry level but i can't see a need for extreme processing power. a mac is more expensive for what you get, also you can get SLI on a PC so if you really need to you can have 2 quadros running inside your system (though in most cases 1 is way more than enough but the ability to upgrade if needed is very useful)
, so you will either be looking at a Mac Pro or a Dell Precision (unless you will be building it yourself)

windows XP and Mac OS X as far as i know are very compatible.
obviously Mac-Mac compatibility will be better than PC-Mac compatibility but the gap is closing constantly, but a mac might add peace of mind

buy a mac and install bootcamp on it, then you can effectively have the next best thing to both options.