Amusing post Tom. Shall we presume your machine was still responsive as you switched between and used apps?

I like DragThing: one thing it does is dedicate a dock to running processes: looks cleaner and easier than "top" or Activity Monitor. Download it and set the Process Dock to run with Hidden applications in Load Order. That will be an eye-opening way to see how obscene your number of running processes is.

Tom, you're aware that on the Mac, it's "TextEdit," right? :-)

So you *did* get my email. It's probably # 17462. I'm sure you'll get back to me shortly ;-)

You could try Witch, that allows for easy access to documents Windows "by title", instead of Exposè's "by window picture". And of course, missing from that is QuickSilver…

Pleased to see you've also discovered ecto. I love that little tool.

I switched to Mac as my primary computer a little over three years ago now, and one of the first experiences that made me realize I was never going back was similar to yours. On my Titanium G4 PowerBook, I was simultaneously downloading FLAC files from a band's website, decompressing them with MacFLAC, importing and converting to MP3 using iTunes, and burning to CD using Toast. All while surfing the Internet and checking my e-mail. In my PC days, I would never have done ANYTHING while burning a CD, for fear that the burn would fail and the machine would lock up. Now it's just another reliable process going on in the background while I do real work.