Computer troubles - bye Apple (for now)

My ibook gave it up two weeks ago in Florida. It took all of 15 seconds. I haven't had it professionally diagnosed (or autopsied). And despite having spend hundreds on memory and Tiger (OS 10.4) in the past couple of months, I felt that it was time to move on.
Prior to the upgrades I had one complaint with my 15" G4 unit, it was loud. I was unaware that the constantly running fan was abnormal. So after some research and contemplation I went into the machine and unplugged the fan. At the same time I also installed a temperature gauging program to get data on whether I should ever plug it back in. I ran like this for a couple of months and the temp was reasonable and the quiet was very nice. This allowed for the upgrades to make sense.
Maybe it was the operating system that ran hotter, or maybe the operating temperature just slow cooked it. There it is.
On to the replacement. Apple only offers a 13" moniter laptop under $2000. Despite the overall satisfaction with Mac's, the Macbook screen was too tiny for my middle aged eyes. After some research and contemplation I bought a PC. Tipping the balance was the challenge of facing the fear and learning anew. A 15.4" HP in it's final viewing at the local big box retailer sealed the deal. I must admit that my daughter's having a Dell and still being "cool" helped get me there.
On a Sunday morning, I was one of the first into the Best Buy and by 11:35 I had powered up the unit, one just like the one I am working on now. I had plenty of warnings to be patient with the start-up as Vista and the rest would be loading. They said 25 minutes, 45 minutes, maybe I heard longer. So after three hours it was time to call the manufacturer. HP in this case was represented by a call center "technician" in Bangalore. After an hour in the queue and 20 minutes of trials, he had me initiate a hard drive reformat to the factory settings then gave me a case number and said farewell. The unit froze up again after a half hour, which put me back in an hour queue for help.
The next technican was even more difficult to understand and less skilled and suggested that I should have my laptop serviced. This was after owning it for only 6 hours.
To make a long story short, 10 minutes before closing, Best Buy handed me a new unit, 30 minutes later it was fired up and working at home. Well, almost working.
Seems like it had some intermittant problem communicating with the Apple Airport Extreme router.
This problem went on for the next 5 days, and I foolishly engaged HP's call center yet again to help out. That was completely a waste of effort and hope. I used my own problemsolving to end up with a new router installed on Saturday afternoon.
Six days of frustration and I feel a little proud of overcoming the challenges. Still, it's wierd knowing that a Mac out of the box would have been up and connected in 3 minutes. I'm good for now, but....I still haven't recovered my music from the G3 Ipod into the HP! I want my MUSIC!