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When I met my wife about 6 years ago I was a Mac user and she would consider nothing but a PC.

She is a University Professor and consults on the side. Over the course of 5 years, we had numerous incidents where her PC would crash hard enough to require days of troubleshooting to get it back up & running. Meanwhile my Mac would just keep on ticking.

The problem with the PC crashes is that every once in a while she would have a major report due in the next day or two. Five time in 5 years this happend with so little time before the report was due that the only solution was to go out & buy a "fresh" PC so she could restore her data from a backup, reload software and continue working.

She never bought "junk" PCs, Sony, & HP were the only brands she would touch. The only good part of this is that the consulting fee for the reports was more than the cost of the new PCs. On the other hand, having to set up a new machine is an hours long job.

Bottom line is she was forced to try a Mac as part of a technology introduction program about a year ago, and now her PCs are dust collectors. With OS X you just cant make a Mac crash. Sometimes a program will quit, but you just open the program again & continue.

To me, the deciding factor is "what are you going to use a computer for?" If you are a home user and just want a machine for email and internet browsing a PC is cheaper & when it quits working you are not under a deadline to get it up & running again. If you have any kind of serious use for the thing, a Mac will cost you more up front but you will save money because they just work.

The final advantage is--no games. Macs are incredibly deficient when it comes to games. This means the kids will not ever try to take over your machine for their use.

The final advantage is--no games. Macs are incredibly deficient when it comes to games.

A quick search of Apple's website turned up 1444 game titles available for the Mac.

Granted, they may not include the latest and greatest PC shootemup, but 'no games' doesn't quite wash.

With OS X you just cant make a Mac crash. Sometimes a program will quit, but you just open the program again & continue.

I've been very happy with OS X. I have never gone so long (on either a Mac or a PC) without a problem (and, man, there were SO many problems with the HP running Windows 98 when I was in my thesis advisor's lab).