I've never been someone to pick sides regarding the Macintosh vs. Microsoft war, and my only excuse for not getting more involved with the hip, image-fixated Mac world has been money-related. (Macs are well-built, well-designed pieces of machinery that cost a fortune.) If I had tons of expendable cash, I'm sure I'd eventually get one, but at home I work with a homemade PC, a small aluminum rectangle which, were it just a tad shorter, would be quite reminiscent of one of Macintosh's G4 Cubes. All in all, the attractive aluminum Biostar housing and all the necessary accessories were pretty cheap.

Still, I just want to put the following on the record: As I write this, I'm using a brand new, dual processor Apple Macintosh G5 with 1.5 Gb of RAM which my workplace purchased for my office about a week ago. The machine is nothing short of incredible, with its REAL brushed (heavy) metal casing and the 20" Cinema Display sitting atop my desk. It's all been enough to get me VERY close to considering buying one for home use.

Okay, now here's the point. To anyone out there who is convinced that Macintosh computers crash far less frequently than a PC, I have this to say: You haven't had the chance to use my machine. In the 7 days I've been using it regularly, I've had to forcibly shut the thing down at least on 5 different occasions. And these hard lockups have been random -- when starting various applications, when sending an email, when installing a piece of software, etc. In each of these instances I was unable to use the Apple's three finger salute (Option/Apple/Esc) to escape the lockdown -- I get to move the mouse all I want, but nothing else happens (well, if iTunes is running, the current song stays on and I effectively have a $4500 iPod. Hurrah.) I can honestly say that in the past 3 months I've experienced fewer crashes on my home PC running Windows XP -- and when I do have to hit the Control/Alt/Delete combo I GET A RESPONSE AND CAN SHUT THINGS DOWN!

I'll continue to remain as objective and fair as possible while judging the two operating systems, but I have to say that I'm now in a much better position to criticize the Mac. I can put up with the occasional crash and the minorly annoying reboot, but I'll be a lot less tolerant of the Apple t-shirted know-it-all telling me about how superior Macs are to Mics.

What a load of horse-apples...