./shrug. as you say gottaa, macs are just as susceptible to stupidity as any pc. perhaps the reason you see more pcs with these problems than macs is just that there are more pcs out there to go wrong - oh, and that you can run more stuff on them so somethings more likely to go wrong
(obligatory mac bashing complete).
i'm a firm believer in everyone working within their own limits of fixing stuff. i know that if i screw up my pc royally, i can always just format the lot and start from scratch - so i tend to play fairly fast and loose with installing stuff. (that and the most sensitive thing i use this pc for, is my wow account - and i have an authenticator for that
). I wouldnt recomend people that wouldnt know how to fix things to install things like limewire and bittorrent though. not that the programs themselves are the problem, its when you download something that claims to be 'HD version of Iron Man 2!!!', try to watch it, and then click "yes i'd like to install this 'codec'" and think "of course i'll go to this random website and install this random program, and of course it needs access to the internet to verify my codecs, thats just common sense!" - thats when you start having problems
what i dont appreciate is getting a phone call from relatives going 'my computers stopped working again!' - since the response to 'what did you do to it?' generally starts with 'well i uninstalled that virus checker you put on last time, because it kept using our internet to update itself" and leads on to "and so then i installed this program that said it would fix something..." ./sigh. and of course you cant get through to them that if they want to download music, they can either pay for it, or use some common sense.