Marco Arment has written a blog post entitled Whatever works for you and I recommend that you read it. This blog post really piggybacks on a lot of overall ideas he posted about there.
I’ll admit that I’m still a raging Apple fanboy, and I primarily use the stuff coming out of Cupertino, but my approach to what others use for technology is increasingly coming around to what Marco is talking about. I just don’t have the time nor the energy to argue about technology choices anymore. I have a family to occupy my energy and much better things to focus on.
The other aspect of things is that there is just a ton of “good enough” technology out there to get work done with. If you buy almost any Windows PC available today with the intent of looking at stuff on the web, you are going to be fine. Yes, there are things I would do to just clean things up and make it a better experience, but they are minor. Heck, even the newest Celeron chips are not as terrible as they used to be.
I choose to pay more for what I consider to be a superior computing experience which Apple provides for me. I have a MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPad, and Airport Extreme … and they all work together flawlessly. My wife has a MacBook, iPhone, and uses the same Airport Extreme while at home. For us, it “just works”, but if you don’t want to go that route then more power to you.
However, I also take it a step further and still support people using whatever technology they decide to use. Sometimes this means taking a crash course in a new technology I’m not familiar with, but that can be part of the fun. I’ll try and make almost anything work as best I can, but when the chips come down, I will let them know my opinion if they ask for it.
In closing, I agree with pretty much everything Marco says. Honestly, use what you want and enjoy it. It is pretty amazing what we can do with even the cheapest of smartphones today, or the least expensive laptop available, so DO something with it.