[JERRY2KONE]

Trust me BG I agree with you on every account, and the only Apple stuff we own are our various Ipod/Itouch products. But now the boys had to have their Mac-book Pro laptops in order to go to this school, which is not only a very good school, but it is also litterally 100 yards from our front door. If they did go to any other school here they would have to use public transportation to and from school and we just want to avoid that if possible.

Not that it was a big deal but HP bought out Palm last year for something like $10B as well, so they will also be going away once HP drops out of the market. THeir plan is to stop selling home PC gear next Oct, and I would bet that the product support will dwindle within a few years after that. We are kind of bummed, because we have HP all over our house. 3 HP cameras, 4 HP printers, and 3 HP laptops. Oh well.

I have been pretty much against Apple for quite some time now for the very reasons you also stated. Still with HP departing that leaves some pretty awful companies for us to deal with. I do not like Dell simply because their customer service is apauling from my experience. Gateway, Lannova, Toshiba, Samsung, Asus, Alienware, and all the rest are operating pretty skimpy in comparison and frankly do not offer much to desire compared to Mac in todays envronment. Mac is taking over whether we like it or not. I am on a Toshiba now and it is OK, but in time all of this will be history. With our kids now using Mac's it is hard not to want to give it a try. Plus it is easier to help them out if we have the same platform. The new I-Pad now has over 50,000 applications avialable and that number is growing quickly. You can use I-pads to do just about anything now-a-days. They really are phenominal in comparison to anything else on the market today.