Also considering a new laptop to replace my aging Dell Inspiron 8600 from December 2004. I'm also wary of going back to a Mac.

My Mac is less that 2 years old. With the price paid for it, you would expect a little more life than that.

I have an Aesus and have been very pleased.. got more bang for my $ too

I'd take it in to the Apple Store. What have you got to lose. My MBP is 3.5 years old, still running well.

I doubt I will ever go back to Windows. I don't like the bloat, and the poor design. And OSX is Unix, so I can work with the underlying OS.

But your MacBook should definitely last more than two years. Windows laptops, about two years useful life has been my experience.

I do like the Apple design a lot. Very slick and user friendly. I just don't like the way they lock everything down. Ah the trade offs.

I guess I did let my angst get the better of me concerning my negative Apple rant.

Back to normal now....for the time being.

I don't get locked down for MacBooks. iPhones and iPads, yes. But OSX is much easier to get at the guts than Windows. Much more public info.

I pay $100/year for a developer membership, and I can do pretty much what I want with my phone and iPad. And tons of learning material.

That's less than 10% of what you would pay MS for a developer membership at the lowest level (at least the last time I priced it).

I'm not a computer technician, Apple or Windows. I do however like to tinker with electronics. Especially when they are out of warranty.

I was always able to open up windows machines and replace parts easily. I could fix it myself.

I watched a video the other day on how to replace the screen on an iphone. Wow, what a chore!

Having said that, the Macbook pro is easily accessible from the back panel. I guess if I had to I could replace the HD or logic board myself

I'm thinking about putting a new HD in mine. Looks easy enough. Other than laptops, the last pre-built computer that I bought was in 1994.