I had to use Apple a lot in college. Personally, I never liked it. Sure, it may have less viruses (at the moment) and yadda yadda, but I just never liked it. Got used to it, but that's not the same. My laptop is almost 4 years old and, thanks to a 40% sale, it hasn't been as outpaced as much as anything that I could have afforded without the sale. Still got Office 2003 and XP - I can't stand Office 2007 and I never wanted to get Vista. I need a new computer by spring, though. Probably a desktop with Windows 7, then Office 2010 when it's out. For what it's worth, I remember hearing Windows 7 is like Vista, just working and better. Not a major jump as far as evolutionary, but a big increase in quality.
Well I may have saved this thing in time. I kept getting Low memory warnings, and a couple blue screen crashes, but after scanning with malware and spybot it's seems to be running great. And damn does fire fox and lime wire use a lot of memory lol. Still going to to a fresh install, just need a durn external, yeah I'm more concerned with hanging out with the kiddos this 2 weeks than fixing my puter.
I got a WD my book essential 1tb at target for 85 bucks pretty cheap actually. I creating the recovery disk right now, we'll see how things go. I'm kind of not really too enthused with trying to find drivers for everything going the xp or 7 or hackintosh route.
The Vista drivers work with 7, but I understand where you're coming from.