Although nearly all our clients run Microsoft Windows based systems, we choose to do all our development - and nearly everything else - on Mac Powerbooks. I started on Macs back in the very early 90s, moved to Windows for six years when the business got going, and came home, so to speak, in the fall of 2003 when a mail virus nearly wiped me out and stole a week of my time before I was able to completely eradicate it. We still have two Windows computers, and the HP in particular is reliable as hell, but since I do this stuff eight to ten hours a day, I'm gonna do it where I'm comfortable, and that's on the Macs.

My main development computer, a 15" Powerbook, just passed three years old, and has been used maybe six to eight hours most days over that whole time! Been across the country eight times, left outside on a snowy runway in Alaska for an hour and a half while the ground crew fooled around with the Piper plane (and an inch of snow piled up on the laptop case - see picture before snow started), worked in 114 degree Arizona summer heat - oops, make that ten trips across the country - and has never so much as coughed once, much less puked up a hard drive or something similar. Scheduled for replacement next year with a new 15" MacBook Pro when Leopard (the next Apple operating system) comes out, but I tell you I love this thing. I may have it bronzed. What a workhorse!