Really? How are they mounted and to what as the server?
Mmm... Perhaps that's a G4 issue. I'll try forcing a filesystem check and see how long it takes, but have never seen this long a boot time even after a cold power off.
Neither did I apart from Office.
Normally I would agree with you. However, PCs are all about commodity hardware upon which the majority of people install or have installed for them a proprietary "operating system" from Microsoft and usually applications from Microsoft as well.
There is very little to choose between the hardware vendors anyway. It either gets fixed by partial or full replacement.
For the user, most of the investment is in time to fix the software when it breaks or in getting it to work reliably or at all with combinations of hardware in the first place. In that respect having something that is known to run on a defined platform is a distinct advantage.
OTOH, at least OS/X is based on a reasonably open environment. One can add and run or add compile and run most Unix based material, for example. Even if one doesn't do that, it becomes a comparison between one vendor's proprietary environment and another's.
So overall, for my use I think it's well worth sacrificing the hardware vendor choice
Depends what you want. I've never found any problem in finding something for what I've needed.
Very little. VMWare costs $79.99 at the moment.
Of course. I mean for my major professional use where there is business criticality.
This all sounds very much like issues of trying to run newer generation software or requirements on older generation hardware.
Whichever way, I think that one ends up spending money. I know people who are dual booting Linux and OS/X on their Macs for certain jobs and running Linux under VMWare for others. That can be reasonable as well. Does depend on what you do, though.