If your main gripes are errors and the "get genuine" screen, don't expect much refuge in the OS X world.
Used them for a good couple years doing graphics through school, even maintained the lab.
Most. Cryptic. Error. Messages. EVER.
Not even Google could survive the onslaught.
Though, more often than not, the application or OS just poofs and doesn't even give you an error message. Joy.
Give me a BSoD any day over "error free" crashes and restarts.
I must say though, Apple does a very good job of putting up the facade that it's OS is more stable. If the user has nothing to associate with crashes like error messages or BSoDs, then they have nothing to reference or whine about online other than text messages, which nobody ever reads. Just like how this message will never reach anyone. And made ever harder by the fact that video is a lot harder to share than pictures.
Random unfixable slowdowns are also present, only with these, you can't just run your registry through a cleaner, because there isn't one.
Only solution we found at the time was to reload the entire OS and all the applications again. Premiere, After Effects, FreeHand, Illustrator, PageMaker, InDesign, Flash, etc etc.
I got really put off those Macs those few years. Though the instructor's reasoning for using them was understandable as he revealed to me, he just didn't want the students to be playing games on the computers all day.
As for upgrading the laptop yourself, make sure to read the warranty info carefully. Because you'll likely bust it if you so much as lift a sticker off a screw if I remember correctly. Maybe, maybe not, haven't really been following Apple's policies lately.
