I switched to a Mac a few years ago.  I like Macs, like the user interface, like the hardware design, like the stability of the operating system and not having to worry about viruses and other malware like I did with a PC.

But last week my Apple fandom went to a new level, because on Friday my hard drive died.  My MacBook Pro started running really slowly late Friday morning, and by early afternoon it had slowed to a crawl (almost as slow as a four year old Dell).  I tried to reboot in safe mode, and it wouldn’t even boot.  It was dead.  My work documents, all our family pictures, everything, gone.

Tech support came to my office and took my laptop and my external hard drive (the one I connect to my laptop every morning when I come to work).  A few hours later, I had a loaner MacBook Pro indistinguishable from my own laptop.  Same applications, same files, same recognized wireless networks, same desktop picture, everything.

It’s because a few months ago I upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard, which has built-in software (called Time Machine) that automatically backs up everything to my external hard drive (external drives have a ton of storage and they’re cheap).  So tech support just connected my external hard drive to a loaner laptop and moved all the data over.  Bingo, the loaner laptop became an exact replica of my (now toasted) laptop.  They’ll do it again after they install a new hard drive in my laptop, and I’ll be as good as new.  And I could easily do it myself - it’s basically a one-click process.

If you don’t have a Mac, get a Mac.

If you have a Mac but don’t have Leopard, get Leopard.

If you have Leopard but don’t have Time Machine backing up to an external hard drive, do it now.