In my opinion if I to pick one to carry around for school or something along those lines I would take the mac. I love my Alienware but for portabilty the mac is the winner.
http://www.lunderworld.com/DSC00137.JPG
Here's a pic of my mac. It's my work machine for tech support but I so far I like it. Also this is my first mac since using an Apple IIg in school to learn how to type and play the Oregon Trail.
Here's mine
http://www.lunderworld.com/DSC00137.JPG
And yes that is a Mac on my desk.....nobody freak out....it's my machine for work, since I do desktop support I needed to learn my way around one. I also have two desks now, one for...
http://www.liutilities.com/products/...brary/svchost/
From that description of what is crashing you might have to do a respawn. Have you tired safe mode at all?
Happy to here to hear you got everything up and running. As far as the performance on the Quadro goes trust me it will keep impressing you all the time.
Ah.....I think it's under Xp then mobile systems the hit search and I think all the bios upgrades are listed and what they do. But I am not sure if you have to or not becasue you have to know which one you have before you flash your bios...
You said you talked to AW and they said your machine was fine for the upgrade right? I know in the drivers section of the downloads there is a bios update for certain mahines to take the Quadro so maybe you should double check the bios...