Fundamentally the same, slightly different

I'm in the process of moving from a Windows PC to a Mac. I haven't decided which Mac it's going to be yet, but it's going to be powerful for sure. I was a mac user for a long time but something went down and the mac was never seen again. I've been using a PC since. The price was lower for sure. But it's been quite apparent for a long time where the limitations creep in. My budget laptop is barely capable of running Windows Vista. But it carries that stupid capable sticker like a badge of honor. If only Intel didn't screw people around. And pulled Microsoft into the scam. My laptop was only bought a 4 months before the release of Vista. It wouldn't be the fastest on the block, but it damn sure should have worked the way it was supposed to.
Now as soon as the budget clears this month I'm going for it. But with change of operating systems comes slightly different, yet annoying ways of doing the same tasks.
For example. I was using iPhoto for a few years on the Mac. The equivalent on the PC was Picasa, bought by Google. My first impression of it was a pretty good one. The interface was similar to iPhoto in many respect. The editing tools were very nice. I didn't understand it's reliance on folders. I like the way iPhoto sorted this mess out for automatically based on year/month/day hierarchy. I have multiple cameras so when I download them to the PC I use the month of the download. Picasa really made a mess of things, because Albums of the same date weren't put in the same folder 2007_4 and 2007_4_1 for example. I'm using iPhoto once again. I hope the speed has improved, one thing I like about Picasa was the speed. and the integration with picasaweb. But as a long time Flickr user I prefer to use flickr.