Until recently I had an old PowerBook G4 and a Macbook Pro. When the Powerbook died I had to make a choice of forking out significant money to replace it with another apple product or get something cheaper. The Macbook Pro allows me to do iOS development which I need for work, the second machine is really more for wife and kids so it's not that important what it runs but I still like the idea of having a Unix/Linux system.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Ubuntu listed several laptops on their site that would work with their distro so I ended up getting a Dell Inspiron 15 which I re-partitioned. After that I installed Ubuntu 11.04 without a problem and everything works after installation.
Wife and kids use the Windows 7 partition and I use the Ubuntu partition when I use it which is actually quite often. The machine is obviously not as nice as a Macbook Pro but it costs only a third of what the smallest Macbook Pro costs and as far as I've been able to tell it works just as well for most purposes.

If you're after a good Unix/Linux experience for a reasonable price I think this is a good option.

Coupled with Microsoft's long standing campaign to influence social media discussions in technical forums, like this one. Instead of investing that money in making better products, we've come to the point where success has to include not only dominating the market, but influencing social media and the regulatory environment. It's almost like their operating system business is an afterthought for Microsoft these days. They're not about building better products as much as hanging on to their market share and putting down competition.

It seems to me that's not a very good business model. North American car companies have tried that game too and we all know how much good that has done them. Instead of building cars with better fuel economy and overall quality they have lobbied for lower fuel efficiency standards and political means to keep competitors out of the market. In the end car companies that make better cars come out on top.

It would be interesting to find out why they run the company that way. Is it because they have lost touch with what consumers want? Or is it because they really believe that this is how you beat the competition?

For now my money is on any company that is not as heavily invested in desktop OS' as Microsoft. I would not be surprised if in ten years your OS and computing device will be as relevant to your user experience as what brand of TV you use today is relevent to how you watch TV. It will have only minor influence on how you experience your networked world.

I think you're forgetting one option; you could become an entrepeneur. Then again, I might be 'Jumping to Conclusions'.

I'm not sure what to think of the comparison of flying and driving statistics. Those statistics assume every driver has the same chance of getting into an accident as any other driver. This is obviously not the case (ask insurance companies) because some drivers are simply a lot better than other drivers even if they don't control all of the environment factors.

I assume the same can be said about system administration. It depends on the organization. Some organizations are very good at it and might do as well or better than Google. Others, well, you get the picture.