Reader's Story: I switched to Mac and don't care about the price difference

Interesting story emailed to me by a reader (Matt from New York):

A little over a year ago I made the switch to Mac computers and I don't regret it.

I was at the time starting a business and I bought two desktop systems and two notebooks. I bought them from HP and admittedly I bought them as a consumer rather than a business customer, which might have been a mistake (I can only assume that business users are treated better). Of the four systems I bought the two desktop systems arrived DOA (one had something rattling around inside, which later turned out to the processor's heatsink!). It took almost a month to get the two desktop systems fixed, one was replaced, the other fixed by an engineer after several home visits.

About a month after I got the desktop systems working one of the notebooks failed (dead screen), and that took over a month to get fixed. By now the downtime and hassles of getting the systems fixed had cost me several thousand dollars.

Then I snapped and decided that I couldn't base my consultancy business on what seemed like shoddy hardware. Later that day I went out to my local Apple store and picked up two iMacs and two MacBooks. The total cost was around 30% more than the HP systems that I was replacing but the difference was immediately obvious - to begin with all the systems worked right out of the box! I later sold my HP systems for about a quarter of what I paid for them.

So why did I choose to go for Macs? Two reasons. First, I know a number of people with Macs, and they all rate Apple support and customer services highly (not one person I know of had a single Apple support horror story to tell). Secondly, I had first-hand experience of how good Apple support was when my iPod died and I took it back to the Apple store to get it fixed. Dealing with the guys and gals at the Genius Bar was a pleasant experience from start to finish. I don't expect things not to go wrong, but I do expect things to be dealt with promptly

I know that taking the Mac route cost me more than regular PCs would have, but given that they've worked flawlessly in that time, I can honestly say that the extra cash was money well spent!