@ Mat and Stu Reeves
Mat, I'm a Senior Artworker in the oil platform industry, designing safety and process manuals for platforms such as Thunder Horse and FPSO Vincent. Platforms that require 2,000 page operating and safety manuals, that are updated monthly according to international standards. I travel a lot, and need a tool that won't hinder my productivity. You cannot just arrange another visit to a plaform in the Gulf of Mexico.
Why just this morning I have had to reinstall InDesign on XP, because of DLL errors that spew out random, daft messages such as 'could not load Help because Sys32ID.dll could not be found'.
We have an external HD with OS X and CS3 on it, if the absolute worst happens and I have to reinstall OS X, it takes me 15 minutes and I KNOW it will work. With XP, it's hit and miss, and you have to reinstall, re-register, etc etc etc.
Stu, what exactly is wrong with buying a Mac that has been tested by Apple to run their OS? So you've got a kit car, well you must be in the 1% of the population that have one. Me (and 99% of the population), I went to a showroom and bought my car, then drove it away. Apart from a yearly service, checking tyres, oil and filling it with petrol, that's all I need to do to use my car every day. Imagine if it behaved like XP, with an engine from Ford, a chassis from Honda and an interior from Lada - who do I go to if it breaks?
You get what you pay for in this life, and if you want to carry on buying £300 laptops then by all means do, but when it breaks after 18 months don't go crying to Cheng Shin (or whoever you bought it off), because they will just tell you to buy another one.