Possible Switcher - Got some questions

Question

I'll be honest, i use some macs at my local college, they have G5 towers that are loaded. But the thing is out of 5 machines 2 are out of commision. And one of the 2 has been repaired once already, while the 200 pc's in the room seem to hum along. I am seriously considering a mac book at the end of the year.
Second, as i use the mac, Safari in particular seems to have a tendancy to suddenly quit, which i do not have this problem running windows on my mac machine.
Thoughts and comments welcome.

Answer 1

I'll be honest, i use some macs at my local college,
they have G5 towers that are loaded. But the thing is
out of 5 machines 2 are out of commision. And one of
the 2 has been repaired once already, while the 200
pc's in the room seem to hum along.
Let's re-read this quote carefully, shall we? It's a little math problem: there are 5 macs in the computer room and 200 PC's. If 300 students decide to use the computers, and 200 are PC users, while 100 are mac users, how many users will there be per machine?
Yes, indeed! 1 person per PC and...20 per Mac. Even if there were only 20 Mac students they'd still be used 4x more often. And guess what? If two out of 200 PC's are broken...who's gonna notice? Well, let's be fair, you'd have to have 2 out of every 5 PC's...tell you what, let's have half go down. That's more PC's down than Macs...and yet, you'd still have 100 PC's running. So the PC room could keep humming even though HALF of them were down.
And consider this: Let's say only 10 students use Macs...but 200 use PC's. Which do you think is going to get repaired? And given that it's a PC world...which do you think the computer experts at your school know how to fix? Mac or PC?
And then there is the cost difference. How much of a discount is your school getting on those PC's as a package deal? If a PC breaks, replace it...cheap--it's part of the package deal. They're only meant to last a year or two anyway given that the seller is selling them to the school at...what? $300 each? Less? The Macs cost more because the school decided to buy only 5, not 200. Now those Macs have to last much longer, and if they break, they don't get replaced. They sit there...broken.
Do you see what I'm getting at?
Computers break. They have panic attacks, mother boards fail, disk drives die. It happens to all computers. But that computer room is more likely to fix or repair the PC's because more students use them and they're part of a cheap package deal which probably includes free repairs or replacements. They're less likely to bother with the Macs because fewer students use them and they cost a lot more to replace--possibly to repair if the school doesn't have Apple Care. So if the Macs go out of commission they stay out even if their problem is easily fixed. Why bother when there are only a handful of Mac users in the whole school?
In short...you haven't got a fair comparison there. You really need to talk to a school which runs Macs and only Macs. But I'll tell you this--there are research labs that use only Macs. And movie studios. And banks. I kinda think they wouldn't use them if they weren't reliable. Schools have to take what they can get...but labs and studios and banks can buy what they want. And Macs are often what they buy.
Speaking from personal experience, I've found that Macs have an amazingly good track record. There are clamshell ibooks still being used, and on average, a Mac Laptop will last you 4-6 years. A desktop longer. They are well built and reliable, and have a good resale value. And the Mac OS is not (not yet at least) in need of protection from viruses. I have hopes that one day, you'll walk into that computer lab and they'll tell you that all the PC's are down because of a virus.
Only the Macs will be up and running.