Anytime a family member asks what sort of computer they should buy I immediately shout, " Get a Mac!"

While I'm telling them how great OS X is and how cool looking the new iMac will look on their desk, I'm thinking about how I'm sick of fixing their Windows machine.

It's a scenario many of use have encountered. We visit our less than technically savvy family members and they immediately produce a laundry list of problems with their machines.

"The sound doesn't work."

"It takes forever to boot up."

"The browser keeps sending me to porn sites."

"It's slow."

"It keeps asking me for drivers."

"What's a DLL file?"

We end up in the spare room that doubles as an office battling spyware, viruses and missing drivers for the better part of a day while our families continue with their day. After about the 15th Windows restart, you're ready to take a hammer to the machine.

My self-serving evangelism has produced some converts, my brother replaced his aging Wintel notebook with an iMac and I replaced my sister's second-hand PC with a second-hand G4. The help-desk type phone calls from my family have dropped off dramatically. In fact, since the change-over, the biggest issue I've tackled was my sister being unable to connect to her new internet service. Turns out the modem wasn't plugged into the wall.

My wife's family is another story altogether. Their eMachine had become the bane of my existence during our trips to San Diego. I almost had them on the Mac bandwagon when my brother-in-law gave them a new PC. I have secretly hated my brother-in-law since then.

I'm guessing I have another two years of forced PC trouble-shooting. After that, any PC's that enter that house will mysteriously disappear and be replaced by an iMac.

Not just for their benefit, but for mine as well.