to MAC or not to MAC

After 3 years of faithful service, 1 replaced keyboard pad & 2 hard-disk formatting, I think my ACER lappy is into its last days - the lower part of the LCD screen has been flickering and when it is not flickering, I can see visible lines of discoloration near the bottom of the screen where there was flickering, they looked not unlike dead pixels.

It's never occurred to me that MAC was even an option, i have 2 advertisement account managers in my office (both accustomed PC users)are forced to use MAC as their work desktops and never fail to tell me how much they hate it - D has been using the MAC for the past yr, and Y has been using the MAC for 5-6 yrs, both would revert to PC anytime, citing MAC's user-unfrenliness as the main reason, not being able to find where the files are hidden, and also in strange website appearance on their browser, it seems much hard to configure (ie figure out) a MAC than a PC.

on top of that, my IT consultant fren is also a PC supporter, so I risk losing excellent (read: free)IT support advice if i switch to MAC. but MAC seems kewl, particularly itunes (& i'm sure other i-stuff) which though supposedly compatible with windows, i've suffered at trying to run itunes on my windows, it wiped off half of my painstakingly DL-ed songs collection.

But now that I am taking my time (while the Acer is holding up) to shop for a replacement for my home lappy (which I use 80% for fun stuff like fotos, surfing, chatting etc and 20% serious stuff like word, excel, ppt etc), I am flirting with the idea of joining the dark side. 5 mins of googling churn up articles & clips that are either biased twds PC or MAC, isnt there someone who can give an objective opinion e.g. "if yr priority is to xxx, choose MAC. but if yr priority is to yyy, get the PC." argh!

But in consolation, i think this is still easier than picking the right man. It is almost like choosing between 2 men, the humourous fun creative SNAG (ie. MAC) who's constantly in danger of getting too much attention from threats (= incompatibility issues, being too niche & nobody knows how to fix them) and the down-to-earth honest straightforwardly sweet homebody who's just a little too predictable sometimes (ie PC).

They say that now MACs are able to run windows stuff and it seems the PCs have this DuoCore function that runs Mac OS X(?!). Perhaps this is a solution for the fickle-minded who can't choose, but not me. I cannot bring myself to compromise owning a machine who is trying to imitate another, if I buy one, I should learn to fly with its capabilities & learn to live with its shortcomings. Anyway, I have been using Media Jukebox instead of itunes for so long... I wouldn't know what I'm missing with itunes =))