Really Glad to Have a Mac
Every time I leave town, on business or vacation, one of the machines I use regularly dies. It's not always the same machine, but it's usually one at work. After DragonCon, it was my macbook pro...it developed difficulty reading its hard drive. I don't back things up nearly as often as I should, but for some reason, I backed up just before leaving. I didn't back up the whole system, just my home folder.
I ordered a new drive, one a little bigger and a little faster, and replaced the drive. I reinstalled OSX, and did the software update thing over the network. I haven't done an easier operating system install since DOS.
Then, I copied my backup home folder over my new home folder (cp -R /Volumes/DESU\ BOX/backup/ryan/* .), logged out and then logged back in...
And there was my old desktop, my dock was on the right side of the screen, all my icons were on the desktop, my apps were back and set up properly, and everything was right with the world. There were a few things with question marks on the dock, but I dragged the apps back to the system Applications folder, and they showed up properly again (and having restored my home folder, they're still configured properly).
I have had many Windows machines crash. This is the first time I have had a mac crash, and it's the first time I have ever painlessly restored a system without losing anything.
I'm never going back.