Fashion accessory? I guess scientists and engineers are a mighty fashionable bunch, then. Most researchers I know (I'm in aerospace and split my time between NASA and Stanford) swear by Apple machines. UNIX underpinnings, It All Just Works, and the hardware is bulletproof. Best of all worlds.

This. Rocks makes it so ridiculously easy to set up a cluster that administration literally can be a single-person job.

For God's sake, mod this guy up! A sensible, considered response, among the "look, I hate Microsoft too!" sheep. Look, I hate Microsoft too, but let's be reasonable! ;-)

Same here. Two of the 7200.11 drives (with updated firmware) died on me in the last year, and one of the RMA replacements also died soon after deployment (I know, I know, never use refurbs in a NAS; I learnt my lesson the hard way). So that's three for me too. I'd love to say "screw Seagate! Never again!" except that I'm hard pressed to find any manufacturer with a known "good" model -- they all seem to have issues. Don't even get me started on WDC. Seagate was the one go-to brand, and at this point I really don't trust them anymore. I guess it's time to stop cheaping out and getting enterprise class drives for NAS use...

The only people with this much to say on the "Macs aren't so great!" soapbox are the ones that don't own them. Period.

This sounds like hyperbole, but it really isn't. I get 5 hours on my i5 MBP without even trying; in "airplane mode" (WiFi + Bluetooth off, screen dimmed) 7 hours is no problem.

<speculation>I've more often than not had issues with "not Intel" chipsets when it came to reliable data transfer, particularly when stressing the system. Maybe Apple found some intermittent issue with their NVIDIA-based machines which were mitigated by turning down the SATA speed?</speculation>

It's a pity that Intel is unable to produce a decent integrated graphics solution...

I do live in Stanford on-campus housing -- and I can assure you that every private AP within range of my MacBook is quite secure.