I have similar experience as the author: ten years of hardcore Linux experience, during my college days I used slackware for 3 years; recompiling kernel wheneve

I have similar experience as the author: ten years of hardcore Linux experience, during my college days I used slackware for 3 years; recompiling kernel whenever an update appeared at kernel.org was my geeky hobby during those days. But alas, as age and commitment catch up with me, I can no longer spend days to make a driver work, or recompile the kernel just to shave a few kilobytes away. I need a machine and an OS that 'just work'. Yes I know if I do some research and google around I can find the 'right machine' where distro X will work just fine. I also know by doing trick X and trick Y will resolve some issue Z. But I am no longer 20+ with a lot of time on my hands. If I got an hour of spare time, I would prefer to read some books, or just sleep, instead of reading the source code or the dmesg outputs. I am not blaming Linux. It is free anyway and done by a lot of smart and dedicated volunteers. My mindset now is I don't mind to pay some money so that my computing needs can be met without too much effort from my end. I am using OS X, and frankly I find Windows 7 is _very_ useable and quite pleasant to play with. Linux has its place in computing, and my desktop always has a partition for the latest version of Ubuntu. But for daily use, count me out. Thank you very much.