PC users are sovereign rational and Mac users are fanatics. Mac users have no grip on reality. I understand. This has been explained to me by dozens of PC advocates.
Nonetheless, since your last post, yet another grad student told me-- my power pack for my PC broke (the second time in six months); can I take you Mac notebook to do my work on this trip. I said yes. The company that was to provide the new power pack emailed him to tell him that despite the promised delivery this week it might actually be several weeks before they could deliver a replacement power pack.
A few years ago my PC friends told me Gateways were vastly superior computers. Now they say they are junk and Dells are awesome. I actually do think that Dells are the best PCs-- probably the only brand worth risking. Nonetheless, the Apple products are consistently more reliable (in my limited years of experience with dozens of computers in labs and personal situations).
What is also strange to me is that in the years of having these debates, the Apple users are rhetorically constructed as irrational. I gather that because the market share is so small (which is its own bizarre distortion-- but I will not pursue that topic) Apple users must obey their PC counterpart insistence that they buy PCs. Actually, we don't have to agree to this insistence, and Apple can continue making money hand over fist by selling quality computers to people who prefer them over PCs. This may in part explain why Apple is one of the fastest rising stocks on the market.
Look, it's not that complicated. You can certainly find hundreds of hardware vendors that would be willing to sell you cheap-ass PCs. But that isn't what we're arguing about here. Dell makes some of the best notebook-class computers in the world. If you purchase a comparable Dell notebook, it will be just as reliable as any Mac notebook. So, don't pretend that you're comparing the cheap-ass crap against your Mac. That's a bogus comparison.