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MTBF is meaningless when applied to such a small sample. What is relevant is that when my computer doesn't work, I can't get things done, and the projects I support miss deadlines. Some of these missed deadlines could cost the company tens of millions of dollars. We need more realiable machines, such as the current crop of Macs, with truly superior engineering.

My company buys top-of-the-line Compaq and Dell desktop computers, in the hope that they will still be useable in three years.

My primary computer is now about three years old. In the past three years, I have had to replace the HD twice, the CD burner twice, the flopply drive three times. One of my office mates just had to get a new computer because it was doing strange things that a software rebuild and a new HD did not fix.

I have used a MAC in the office in the past. My company was at one time the largest industrial user of Apple products (so Apple told us, at least). We never had the problems we've had since we switched to PC's. The IT department became so large that we outsourced IT to CSC. It didn't help.

I keep hearing the myth about software and peripherals being more expensive. In my experience, and that of a former housemate who was a computer consultant, the Mac and the PC use pretty much the same peripherals. In fact, in many cases one doesn't need to look for a peripheral that says it is Mac compatible.

A hard drive doesn't care what flavor of computer it's hooked up to. Printers come with multiple ports for USB and Ethernet, and don't know the difference. USB mice or keyboards the same. The price is identical, since in many cases its the same piece of hardware.

The same applies to the software that most people use. Most software is readily available for MacIntosh, and at the same price as for Windows.

MTBF is meaningless when applied to such a small sample.

I think that's more or less what I said. You were the one who drew a conclusion (Mac more reliable than PC) based on two failures per year in a population of 10. (Sounds high to me, btw.) Accepting your data, one can conclude with moderate confidence that the Mac is probably not significantly less reliable than the PC, which is all I said. From the tone of your original post one might infer that you believed the Mac to be significantly more reliable than the PC.

My last Mac (RIP) was SCSI-based and in the last couple of years SCSI peripherals (including printers) became increasing scarce. And my last Mac OS (I "upgraded" to - I think - OS-X) was kinda buggy and ran slow on my Performa 6400CD. I'm sure a lot's changed since. When my last Mac was new - Performa 6400CD (120 MHz - G3(?) 64 MB RAM, OS-7) - it was clearly better in terms of user interface than my 90 MHz - Pentium, 32 MB, Windows 3.1 machine. And a lot more expensive.

I really do want Microsoft to have serious competition. (Hell, as long as it was American competitors, I'd want them dead.) Especially in terms of security. The security patch du jour approach gets old fast. But the Mac marketing strategy that I intersect with seems to be heavily weighted to the bells and whistles over substance.

Besides, if I were a CIO, I don't know if I'd gamble on going with a company that might not be there tomorrow. They used to say that nobody ever got fired for chosing IBM. (This was back in the 60's - '70's.) They might be pricey but their service was the best, they never left you stranded.