The first step in Mac/PC integration is to pick the Mac that's most suitable for you and your staff. For most business uses, the iMac has more than enough CPU power and peripheral-connection choices. The iMac comes with a 20- or 24-inch flat¬panel display, so if you've already invested in monitors, select a compact, low-cost Mac Mini instead.

The Mini's pedestrian graphics subsys¬tem won't win any benchmarking com¬petitions, but its small and quiet profile makes it unobtrusive on a desk.
Apple's top-of-the-line Mac Pro (now with eight processor cores) delivers im¬pressive power, and has PCI Express and four-bay SATA-drive expandability. It's overkill for most business needs, but morale in your content-creation depart¬ments will soar if you bring a couple of these beefy systems into the building.

The 13-inch, plastic-bodied MacBook is fine for junior-level business travelers, but members of the executive team may prefer to tote the 15-inch aluminum¬encased MacBook Pro, with its higher¬resolution display, better graphics sub¬system, ExpressCard/34 slot, FireWire 800, and illuminated keyboard.

All Macs ship with lots of Apple soft¬ware, including Mac OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard), the consumer-level iLife cre¬ativity suite, and a demo of the iWork productivity suite. One component of iLife is Key¬note, a presentation appli¬cation that embarrasses PowerPoint with its superi¬or animation capabilities and more-elegant prepack¬aged "themes" (Mac-speak for templates).

The included Numbers spreadsheet can't match the enhanced formula and macro capabilities of Excel, however, and iWork's Pages falls short of Microsoft Word as a word wrangler.