the switch was far easier than I thought (it's only been a year for me). I think I'll be even removing a little OS9 partition soon--I just don't use it anymore. Look back at David91's posts--he switched earlier this year. Basically http://www.macattorney.com/tutorial.html tells all about OSX troubleshooting.

As far as finding out what programs Mac warez people like to play with, search for Serial Box to see a list.