At least Windows uses and maintains certain standards which are not present in Apple products.
Microsoft is hardly the shining example of standards compliance ... what are these standards they maintain, exactly?
Those (not all) in IT tend to prefer windoze as they can do more; the OS's are not as tied up as Mac's are.
I have to say that I disagree entirely with the last part of that statement; Windows installations tend to be much more locked down in a corporate SOE than Mac OSX installations tend to be (though that's probably more a reflection of the knowledge and ability of the folk setting up the SOE than it is anything else...)
I'll avoid saying anything else on the subject, lest I come off as some sort of Apple sadcase..
Of course, that's not lounge related; other than my USB key with FF and short cuts.
Small side note; you can get a version of Firefox for OS X that runs on a flash drive (the website for it appears to be down right at the moment, but Google knows where it is). Given the machines can dual-boot though, it's probably not worth the effort of changing everything over for you.
Personally, I'm still really leery about using any public access computer -- especially when it comes to logging in to anything. You just don't know what's running on that computer .. :-|