Advice Whore

As someone who is more tech-savy than not, I seem to be the go-to-guy for most of my friends and family to be whored out for tech advice. Granted - I think about tech stuff most of my day anyways, so I don't really mind, but it's surprising how many of these questions and problems could be avoided by doing two basic things.

First: Get a Mac.
Now I know there's that whole conversation about Mac compatibility with Windows and, more importantly to most people, familiarity with PC's that PC users bring up as reasons not to switch to mac. To this I respond, Macs can run Windows.

Now that a PC has no advantages over a Mac, I should probably try and persuade you with the features Mac OSX has that XP and Vista don't, but more importantly than what the Mac OS has, is what it doesn't have. On a Mac, you never have to worry about viruses, malware, or spyware - oh and you never have to defrag the hard drive either.  The bottom line is that, as it stands right now, Macs require less general maintenance than PCs do.

Second: Backup, backup, backup!
I've been accused of making people cry because I'm the one who has to tell them their hard drive has crashed. To explain how all the pictures, videos, and music that a person has collected over the years has just been blinked out of existence sucks, but this situation is easily avoidable.

You know that Mac I just told you to use? If you plug an external hard drive into it, the computer will ask if you'd like to use the hard drive as a backup. You click yes, and you are forever safe from losing all your data.

Macs are getting more and more affordable. Here is Apple's discount and refurb page.
Cheap External Hard Drives Galore

... and a whole website devoted to affordable hard drives
If you have tech questions (especially Mac ones) feel free to sound off in the comments.