What do I need

I have used PCs for a quarter of a century. The aggrevation of troubleshooting my machine for MALWARE from the internet has finally gotten to me.

So . . . .

I am told

1) that Macs are relatively trouble-free as regards the various forms of cyber-clap, and

2) as a fairly knowledgable PC user, the learning curve in shifting over to a Mac would be fairly short and painless, and

3) that Mac's will read and process a lot of the stuff on my current machine (Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft excell worksheets, jpg images, etc.

I trotted over to an Apple store (credit card in hand) thinking to lug one of the little suckers home. There was a gorgeous thing (I think it was called an iMac or something), 20-inch screen, wireless mouse and keyboard, built-in wireless card. Slick. Somewhere around $1800. Then the salescritter began listing all the things I need to make it work (bootcamp, dotMac, applecare, etc etc etc). So . . .back home to nurse a Jack Daniels and rethink my conversion from the True Faith to Mac.

Any advice as to what I REALLY need? All suggestions would be appreciated.

TIA