I have a friend, and bless his heart, he loves to hold over my head, my once
intolerant mood towards OS X. It's true, Tiger (again in my mind) was horrible,
PPC's were incredibly expensive, and most Mac portables during the early 2000's
were unreliable and not worth my money. So what did the fashion OS
conscious hipster use back then? For me, it was Linux, and mainly because I had
been using it since around 2000 or when I hit 16.
Alex Payne wrote a wonderfully eloquent and simple piece concerning rules for optimal "computing happiness" (something I care deeply about). The recommendation on running Mac or Linux in a home and server environment should be a no brainer for all of us; however, this quote is something that so many of us struggle with:
Use hosted services in lieu of hosting on your own hardware (or virtual hardware) for all but the most custom applications.
Please, think twice before investing money in bare metal, as well as training someone on how to run it unless you ABSOLUTELY need it. Think about it and please read Alex's post, it really is worth it.