honey and sting

Laptops are just delicate compared to desktop units. I love their form factor and I really need the portability, so I put up with their care and feeding. Still, having talked to many laptop toting people at work (Microsoft) and other friends, we all pretty much agree that thinkpads, though quite lovely machines are more delicate than Dell laptops. The worst are Toshiba laptops. Mac laptops seem to be better than all of them, though having worked at Apple I know their quality across models has never been consistent. When they hit a sweet spot in their design, it is a wonderful thing to behold. For example, I have a G3 bronze prototype laptop that is over 7 years old and it works well. I even dropped it once, parts flew out in all directions: the battery, CD drive module, etc., and it works fine to date. On the other hand, my TiBook and my wife's TiBook each had to go in twice to repair a backlight, a bad video connector, and a bad power controller ASIC. So far, I've heard the MacBooks have been reliable. Are they more reliable than a Dell, not certain yet.

The slipstream update mechanism to get Windows running on a Mac (aka Bootcamp), works well for Windows XP. I don't whether Vista can be booted.

Finally, trying to do work on two different operating systems is a real pain. You end up having to move or convert files, and you need to buy software twice over. Whichever OS you pick, pick one.