i don't want to propogate an argument on this topic, I prefer and know also that someone will end up doing it anyway, but I can state in all fairness, being familiar with both platforms and working in the industry that there is now little difference between the two, where once the mac was far more advanced, windows had more market due to it's 'common conveniences'
Now the Mac has reconfigured itself as a nice market appliance of iconic design, and floorless functionality, windows is really trying hard to combat the deficiencies in software. Microsoft make good only on their variety, but not on quality. Servers have changed however, and MS are a good offereing for small business who have little IT knowledge or capacity. Likewise the XServe product from Apple fills this niche nicely. However, being based on a UN*X kernel, Apple are well ahead of MS in terms of software interoperability, functionality and deployment.
But, when it comes to the balance, those who are really in the know, use the unix flavour of the apple mac to get their work done. in the IT market, linux and mac users have found a seemingly natural fondness for their similar platforms, and because much of apple's software development now comes from the open source community, MS has to now deliver it's trump card.
for me personally, I prefer to use Solaris, I love my macs to bits and I have a few windows boxes to do common tasks on, but the one I use the most is still the Solaris box, followed by the mac powerbook and tower, with wondows being a last resort. So much so, that now, iTunes only accesses the storage on the windows machine. nothing else.
If I were to recommend a computer to someone buying, the advice would be buy the mac. It's got way more bang for buck, and you can torrent any software you want, just like you do for windows... not that I condone the illegal copying, distribution or use of illegitimate software copies.... for legal reasons