Mac vs PC - which and why?

[pianogirl04]

I'm a senior in high school (who hears pomp and circumstance other than me right now?) and I'm headed to a state debate tournament at the end of March. My 'rents have said they'll buy me a laptop before I go and it's up to me as far as what I want. Sounds easy, right?

So basically what I want this for is school (web, email, word processing, mp3s)... and music. I've been trying to get my hands on some kind of multitrack recorder to record my demos on, but it hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen any time soon. After some research into the world of digital music, I've been told by everyone from my debate teammate to my friend who goes to Berklee that Mac is the way to go if music is coming into the digital picture. I've also read that Brett Tuggle works on a Mac, which puts things into perspective because I want to do what he does. And if that's the case, there's no way I'm hooking my keyboard up to my PC if it took me four days just to get it to recognize my cable modem.

But my mom's been doing her own research as well and everyone she's talked to has said Mac is a bad decision to make. She says there's not much software out there, it's difficult to use, etc... she doesn't give me much proof of this, but she says this is what people are telling her. I've heard that Macs are substantially faster than PC, better with multimedia, and have an uber-stable platform... and if this is true, I wouldn't hesitate to have one since I crash my computer every six months at least, more depending on which version of Windows it is.

So, the big question: Which would be your choice - Mac or PC - and why?