I think it's only fair to mention that this is on my netbook - it's reasonable, but not the most powerful machine. Netflix doesn't work because of no Silverlig

I think it's only fair to mention that this is on my netbook - it's reasonable, but not the most powerful machine. Netflix doesn't work because of no Silverlight. Hulu and YouTube are unwatchably slow when fullscreened. They work perfectly fine under Windows on an older machine. In addition, having a YouTube chrome tab open slows everything to a halt. The built in Ruby is an older version, and it conflicts with any new version you install unless you use something magical like RVM. It's very confusing for someone new to the Ruby toolchain. The installed Java VM doesn't seem to work with Minecraft, and getting it to work involves doing things that remind me of DOS gaming back in the 90s. Gmail has been freezing in Chrome since updating to the latest version of Ubuntu. None of these are killers, and the OS is generally fast and awesome. However, I have the choice between spending 10% mental overhead wrestling with my machine and context-switching to deal with bugs, or spending $2k and buying a Mac. Cumulatively, I feel the Mac will be cheaper.