I have an eMachine at home. I use a Dell Precision for my desktop, and a Toshiba Tecra A11 for my laptop at work.

Mac's are too damn expensive, and while it used to be that a lot of software for science-related issues were Mac-based, that isn't the case any longer. I can't justify a Mac in my home, or work, budget.

Macs are prettierrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

I built my last PC from the motherboard up. It lasted me seven years, which is an eternity. I originally liked Macs for the layout of their OS. Windows 7 is sweet, and really erased the last vestiges of any "Mac want" I had.

I know a lot of people continue to use PCs for gaming. I mean, I remember my days of playing Unreal Tournament in grad school (got my adviser hooked on it actually) ... on a Mac ironically enough. However, I've really taken to buying used games, and you just can't seem to do that with a PC. I've only purchased three games at full price in the last year (2 for the Wii, 1 for the NDS) and probably none before that. Heck, even when I eventually settle on a PS360, I'll wait until they severely price drop, or people finish their version and bring them back in near-mint condition for me to buy at a fraction of the original price.

To be honest, my Backloggery is atrocious. I have over 100 uncompleted games, and I really can't even justify buying new ones until I complete the old ones (some of which I can no longer fathom why I purchased them in the first place).

You could potentially even expand this argument to cover the Wii/PS360. My goal is to eventually, when I get my big screen TV, to connect all my gaming systems to it and use them to surf the net, watch NetFlix ... basically do everything but word process. Which is why I refused to pay more than ~$300 for my latest PC.

I have built my last 4 PCs from scratch. I love PCs. Windows7 is the shit. Macs are prettier but they are an expensive bitch to fix when they break. I used to repair PC laptops in undergrad and sell them on ebay. There wasn't much profit in it, but it was fun! Mac parts are crazy expensive so I never got into repairing them. A lot of scientists like Macs though, it seems like 30%+ of the scientists I meet are mac freaks.

At Gerty if you are looking into doing automated backups, we run a program called Retrospect for our Macs and even backs up our laptops over the wireless at designated times.

Dude only guys that run websites and bitch about Macs run their servers off of Linux! Linux, while it does have its virtues, will probably never be embraced general populace.