Let's kick off the weekend with a sentiment of gratefulness and the feel-good story of the year, shall we? Without further ado, we hereby present Reason Number 714 why you should be happy that you own a Mac: so far, there have been zero reported incidents of frustrated Mac owners grabbing heavy blunt instruments and smashing the living bejeezus out of their misbehaving systems right in the middle of an Apple retail store. (Hey, sometimes it's the little things that count.) The equivalent stats for Wintel ownership, perhaps not surprisingly, aren't quite as encouraging.

Faithful viewer Markintosh kindly tipped us off to an article in the Appleton Post-Crescent about a Midwestern Wintel user who got pushed to the brink and beyond. It seems that Gary Wilke bought his daughter a $2600 Gateway system which has never once worked properly in its entire existence; apparently Gary was never informed that, at Gateway, the quality goes out before the cow spots go on. In a futile attempt to get his daughter's gift to acknowledge its sound card, burn CDs, or even just boot up once in a while, he's taken it back to the store for service "five times" and even sat through a "four-hour home visit from a computer technician," all to no avail.

When the system still failed to boot after its fifth trip home from the store last Friday, Gary brought it back in one last time-- accompanied by "what witnesses described as a 'large sledgehammer.'" Reportedly Gary calmly deposited the computer in the foyer of the Gateway Country from whence it came, told the staff that he'd "take care of it," grabbed the hammer from his car, and sent that Wintel to the Big Splintery Scrap-Heap in the Sky. He then said "have a good day" and drove back home-- where he was later arrested for disorderly conduct and then hauled off to jail.

He's out on bail, now, and awaiting trial. Since disorderly conduct is a misdemeanor, no one got hurt, and the judge will most likely be somewhat sympathetic to his plight (particularly if he or she is member of the 95% of the computer-using population who understands exactly what drove him to such a desperate state), we're guessing that Gary faces at most a modest fine. But think about this the next time your Mac misbehaves a little; if it were a Wintel, it might prompt an act of public violence that would soon have you cooling your heels in the clink. And that brings us to Reason Number 715 why you should be happy that you own a Mac: less jail time.