You won't need to check things out in advance. If you switch to an Intel Mac, both Windows and Linux (and many other OSes) will run perfectly on your machine. If you decide you don't like OSX then you never have to use it. And your performance of Windows/Linux will be just as good - probably far better, going by my friends' experiences - than on the equivalent PC.
The problem I fear with installing OSX on a non Apple computer is that you may not get optimum performance, perhaps it will be glitchy or slower than it should be, and this would be a misleading introduction to Apple. Just as dingdong notes.
I am sure you will find a second-hand Mac at a really bargain price, if money is an option.
Depending what kind of apps you need, you should be able to find OSX equivalents of everything free of charge. For certain fields, such as video, there is far more, better freeware available on Mac than on Windows. Also a lot of Unix tools, which you probably use in Linux, can be used command line in OSX's Terminal, and many have nice GUIs too, all open source on places such as Sourceforge.
I was recently in Silicon Valley and was surprised (and pleased) to learn that Macs are currently the most popular computers for developers. Partly because they are able to run all systems, which makes cross platform testing easier, and partly because they are just so great
