OSX -- Oh, my

[Pahochman at aol.com]

Dear Smart People:

Now that I have been comfortably ensconced with my Ti G4 laptop (the older 
500) and my G4 tower running 9.2, and now that I've spent virtually 20 years 
straight on a Mac OS, I'm getting the picture that it's time to do the 
Jaguar/10 thing soon.

HOWEVER: Since I do TV production, I have many applications and documents on 
my hard drive created with things like Photoshop, Quark, Office, MS Explorer 
for Mac, etc. all of which suit OS9 just fine.  And I'm networked within my 
home office between my wife's computer and mine using nothing more than 
AppleTalk. 

The question: How do I seamlessly (ha ha) move to 10? Is it as simple (but as 
expensive) as buying the upgrades for the software and then praying that it 
works? Since I don't do a LICK of programming myself, the question is of the 
pure end-user variety -- How screwed up will everything in my computer life 
be if I simply go to 10? Will all of my existing applications (and documents 
created with them!) be instantly inaccessible? Will OSX be able to 
"back-read" stuff created in OS9 and then "update" them if I have new 
OSX-ready software like Office, etc loaded on my hard drive?

Let me know, ye kind programmers and kernel wonks...

Best,

Paul Hochman
Today Show
Ski Test Director
SKI Magazine