I'm probably going to take heat for some of my choices: The safe ones: Apple (for their hardware, Industrial Design, aesthetics) but really only for the iPhone

I'm probably going to take heat for some of my choices: The safe ones: Apple (for their hardware, Industrial Design, aesthetics) but really only for the iPhone. Lenovo/IBM for the thinkpads (bulletproof! and the tablets are better than anything out there), Wordpress (there's a plugin for that!). The risky one (here): Microsoft (winge all you want but Windows7 is awesome, XBox is what Apple and Google hope to build beyond the games with all the video/media center/music stuff and Kinect adds a whole new level of communication and interaction, OfficeLive blows away Google Docs in many respects, the entertainment systems in the new Ford vehicles, Zune music subscription (wish it was on iPhone!) and Ballmer is far more fun to laugh at than Steve Jobs is to laugh with. There are many others that I use but they aren't as well known, local, or very niche. Things that they all excel at are customer service, product updating and reliability, and the intagible "fun" factor. I'd include MyRealPage (real estate IDX and site host), Panago Pizza, Japadog (street vendor of hotdogs with a Japanese twist), and the Ninja Tunes crew celebrating their 20th anniversary this year (weekly solid steel show is excellent and never (almost) disappointing... wish I could have attended their recent tour).