First, to "wpgwpg", thanks for your post below.
Bob, thanks you for your posts, it is amazing how many valuable posts you add to the forums. This is in response. With respect to your first post and "what's going on", over the years, at work and at home, I've used many successive Windows versions in many computers, the computers have almost always been Dells. As you would predict, I've endured the periodic slow boot ups, blue screens, crashes, etc., etc.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean in your second post when you say, "...I get the feeling you buy a machine and then use it". But when you continue with the car analogy, I think perhaps you mean, "...use it, but don't maintain it". If that's what you meant, I can happily say that's not the case. I regularly do the physical things such as dust maintenance, as well as "system tools" type actions.
With all that in mind, I'll try to better communicate my question. It's really based on 2 assumptions -- either of which can actually be right or wrong:
1. Some of the periodic slow boot ups, blue screens, crashes, etc. that one experiences with Windows are due to the fact that the OS and hardware are married after being designed and manufactured by separate companies
2. Folks experience less of these bad things with Apples because the design and manufacture of both their software and hardware is an integrated process executed within a single company
Now if (and only if) both of those assumptions are accurate, my question is: as we embark down the latest Windows path (8/8.1), is anybody out there seeing a particularly stable/reliable marriage between the latest OS and any particular PC brands and models?
NOTE: If either or both of those assumptions are inaccurate, then my question is moot!
Finally Bob, to your question regarding tablets (and for that matter, laptops). I confess unabashedly to being an old school guy. Beginning in the early '80s, I, like so many others, appreciated that as the capabilities of PCs evolved, so did screen size in monitors -- albeit sometimes ever so slowly. So with full realization that I'm now in a shrinking minority (and wishing the majority all happiness!), tablets and laptops are a non-starter for me as I am unwilling to go backwards and once again use smaller screens. I'm actually planning to purchase a 27-inch all-in-one.
Again, thanks for all your time and effort in making such a huge contribution to these forums.
Dan