We knew it was time for a new laptop when the frame on our Dell started to crack and the power supply had a short in it which was causing the power to come on and go off sporadically whenever we would use it.  (This wouldn't be much of a problem, except for the fact that the battery was also shot and would last for about 10 minutes before needing to be recharged.)  Not to mention the 10-15 minute pause every time we would try to log on or the frequent crashes, etc. Needless to say our laptop gets a lot of mileage since we live in a foreign country most of the time.

I also knew (because of the above mentioned problems) it was time to move to a Mac.  Luckily we've been saving up for this the last few years and so we made the plunge and went Apple.  So I've been playing (translated not sleeping much) with our new Macbook Pro all weekend.  I had a good feeling about moving to a Mac, but actually using one has me even more convinced.  I am not a zealot yet, but so far so good… You know what they say, "An apple a day, keeps the doctor away."  Let's hope that's the case.  (But we bought the "extended waranty" all the same.)