Are you a Mac or a PC? More importantly what am I?

Who knew such an innocent comment would engender such response and such fervor. Sort of like the old days when it was Coke or Pepsi? McDonald's fries or Burger King... Anyway...
My less than 2 year old (14month to be exact, which is exactly 4 months past the warranty) laptop started doing this wierd go black thing. Right in the middle of typing the screen would go black. But not the black screen of death, this was more of a taunting, I don't want you to finish what you are doing black screen. You could still see the faint outline of everything you were doing just under the black. And the only way, you could fix it was to restart the computer. At first is only happened a couple of times, but when that didn't get a big enough rise out of me it started to doing it about every 5-10 mins. Damn You Computer! It was a huge race to see if I could type or click fast enough to finish something before it went black. Sort of like those games Perfection or Catch Phrase where the timer starts ticking faster and faster and faster and you start to panic...

I finally got John to call Dell customer service to discover that they have outsourced their tech support to the "Geek Squad." Not a good sign. So, I schlepp my laptop over to Best Buy, sure enough I do have a problem, but they can't do anything and so will ship it off to the Great Beyond.

So for the last 3 weeks, I've been shuffling between the kids laptops (when they are at school) and our desktop. None of which has any of my stuff on it. I love my shortcuts... they serve as a list, a reminder of the things I should be checking on... Needless to say, I'm sure all my library books are overdue, my blockbuster queue has nothing in it, our checkbook may be overdrawn and all the kids grades have probably gone to shit... because I can't remember to check any of those things. You must be vigilant in all things people!

Got the phone call from the "In a land far, far away Geek Squad" and it's a "motherboard, system something, flibbity gibbit thing" that needs to be fixed, replaced, created and it's going to cost ~$400. Well the stupid computer only cost us about $600 ( I know you get what you pay for) and John felt like this was ridiculous we'd be better off buying a new one because once the flibbety gibbit goes it's all down hill from there. (Sort of like when you hit 40, but I digress)
On a side note, I found it very difficult to explain to Z why we couldn't afford to pay $400 to repair the computer, but we could pay $800-900 to get a new one. Made perfect sense to us, but he left looking very puzzled. :o)

John has always said whenever the topic of computers comes up that when we grow up and get rich, we're all getting Macs. So, I guess he started thinking that if we were going to buy another new computer maybe we should start the transition to Macs...

I am a little hesitant... those of you who know me, or know me well, know that I DO. NOT. LIKE. CHANGE. John gets up at 6am instead of 515am... meeting is on the 2nd Tues instead of the 3rd Tues...the grocery store upgrades and renovates and changes the positioning of the cereal aisle... WHAT. THE. F. DAVID BLAINE!! (http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTqsV3q7rRU Language!) It all throws me for a loop. So for me to be the guinea pig when it comes to a new computer... scary....
I am probably the least computer literate person in my family... if I need help my children know more than I do...

So, I put the comment out on Facebook, and the response has been overwhelmingly Mac... it seems even if you aren't a Mac, you are turning your children into Macs. Numerous people who have PC's are buying Macs for their kids...

We had a brief tutorial from our FABULOUS neighbors C and J... both are Macs... and it does look pretty cool...Very space age. I like the way when you close a window it gets sucked down...very Star Trek... And I warned them, that most likely I would be standing pitifully outside their window with my computer in hand...often...
We'll see what happens, John is doing research and I'm still stealing my kids computers. Thank God they are teenagers (or close) and they sleep until 1200 and I can have unlimited access in the morning...
For now... I still don't know if I'm a Mac or PC...but I really want to be something!