I'm sure you will get a few responses to your question so I might as well kick this off.
Yes, Dreamweaver works as well, possibly better.
Ditto for PS and Illustrator. (Isn't Illustrator going away or did I misread that?)
Adobe has just release the complete suite as a Universal Binary which means it can run Native on the Intel Macs
Text Edit is the replacement for TeachText/SimpleText
If you have MS Office for Mac, Entourage will be able to import all your email from Outlook. (There is not Outlook version for Mac, Entourage is used instead)
QuickBooks is available for OS X but I don't think the file types are compatible. (Go Figure!) You may need to do some more research on that with Intuit.
Palm Desktop for Mac is available Here
VPN for SSH is built into the OS
Parallels performs very well but it is not going to run as fast as a new PC. To do that, you would need to run XP under Boot Camp. (Free from Apple)
Hope this points you in the right direction
P
I'm ready to replace my 3.5 year old Sony Z1 laptop with something faster. I mainly design web sites for a living. I have a Mac Mini that I use occasionally, but I use the Sony for 95% of my work.
Now it's time for a new computer, and I'm really considering making the switch. The security is a big attraction, and the fact that I can run Parallels is highly attractive as well.
The Mac that I'm considering is the 15-inch 2.4GHz MacBook Pro.
First, here is a list of the programs that I commonly use:
DreamWeaver. Does it work as well on the Mac as it does on the PC?
Photoshop and Illustrator. I know these work well on the Mac.
Notepad. I use this all the time to strip formatting out of the documents that I get from clients. Is there a Mac counterpart? I seem to remember SimpleText from my old pre-OSX days.
Outlook. I have five years worth of e-mail in various archives (.pst files). This is where I could see Parallels coming in handy. Maybe I would continue to use Outlook 2003 in Windows XP for my main e-mail client. Or is there a way to access these files on the Mac?
QuickBooks. Is the Mac version compatible with the PC version? Again, Parallels may be my best bet. My wife helps keep my books, so we both need to be able to work on the same file. She has a very new PC.
Palm Desktop. I use this as my calendar. I also store information in the Memos. Will this work on a Mac?
Putty. I use this for SSH connections to a remote web server. I think there is a counterpart built in to Mac OS?
Second, I'm just wondering about performance. If I use Parallels with Windows XP, how does it run in comparison to how it would run on a new PC?
TIA for any and all advice.
Matt

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic