Thanks, RJD for a very concise description of the issues. I guess that your last statement is really what I was getting at.

I had the HD crash on my Win7 machine last week and am using my wife's Mac until I decide what to do with my machine. The Mac DOES have its good points, but I am still learning my way around a "foreign" platform. My HP laptop is (was, 3 years ago) a high-end machine with the i7 processor, so the decision to buy or fix is not so easy.

I am sorely tempted to tell you to Google "Hackintosh"...

Meanwhile, you can easily dual-boot an Intel Mac into Windows using the Boot Camp utility. Or, if you want to switch back and forth while running, something like Parallels.

For those who are not comfortable with the Windows 8 start screen, you might want to take a look at a product called "START 8" by STARDOCK. It is not very expensive, and it gives you a desktop and start menu that are organized in the classic windows style, making everything much easier to find.

PC

Usually, laptops die from overheat (too much computing power crammed in too little space) or physical damage from being banged around. Hard drives make a lot of heat, and heat kills hard drives.

Have your guy open it up, if it looks sympatico, slap a new hard drive in, bada-bing. BUT -- seriously consider going with an all-solid-state SSD drive instead of a mechanical hard drive. Way less heat, longer battery life, shockproof and higher performance to boot. Outside of the high cost per gig for larger drives, it's win all the way.
http://amzn.to/1g1A78u (affiliate)
Wow, these things are cheaper than I thought. I might get one for this desktop.

Just adding 2 cents that my $6000 Mac at work has been restarted 3 times today because of operating system failure.

That's most likely a hardware failure manifesting as an OS issue.

CD

Let me preface this by saying, I am not interested in religious arguments. I use whatever hardware or software gets the job done. I'm sharing my experiences to try to help, I won't be offended if you think differently.

I have had Macs since 1985, but I have only bought two of them new. Since they hold their value so well, buying used is a viable option. Of the fifteen or so Macs, I have only had one die due to hardware failure, all the rest just got too old to run the software I was using. For me, buying used cures any price problem. This is similar to buying a used car, but without the many possible mechanical failures. (Which cars hold their value best? The luxury models.) Reconditioned Macs can come with a guarantee, if you need that peace of mind.

Presently I have 4 Macs and 1 PC. I use whatever I need to get the job done, but the one PC needs more support than all the Macs I've ever owned combined together. Leave the PC off for a couple months and when you start it up it needs tens or hundreds of megabytes of patches downloaded from MicroSoft. My background is that I've been a professional programmer/analyst since 1978. Naturally I have friends and family that need computer support. I vastly prefer that they get a Mac, it's much less trouble for me.

If you go with a tablet, while no tablet OS is completely secure, Android is infected with malware at a much higher rate than Ios. If you don't believe that, look it up.

Staying with XP is not going to save you from malware. The bad guys will infect whatever's easiest and there are a lot of XP systems still out there.

Here's an article, "Meet the Diehards Who Refuse To Move On From Windows XP", http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04/08/1240245/meet-the-diehards-who-refuse-to-move-on-from-windows-xp
With a little work and prudence you can stay on XP, but you are taking a risk.

-Mark