> For the rest of us, Macs are a far more cost-effective way to spend > computer dollars. Yeah, okay great more Mac VS PC stuff. Macs *are* PC's which are platform specific to "Macintosh OSes" PC simply means "Personal Computer" What most people call PC's they *mean* X86 or IBM Compatible, etc. Which for the most part run "MS Windows OSes" but are not limited to only that. <Rant> Considering 9/10's of consumer software and 7/10's of consumer hardware is only compatible (as in compiled for) with the open X86 hardware platform it isn't surprising that most people use that platform, the fact that there is some debate about which "Platform" is better is surprising. X86/ IMB Compatible is guaranteed more likely to be able to do what you want, develop what you want or buy x part for what you want than the MAC platform. Macintosh is a closed platform as in Apple is the only company that makes the computers, they tried to open up the standards long ago with the power pc stuff and they failed to capture enough of the market to make a difference. Staying a closed system where they can test the hardware with the software before selling the machines is a lot like the same way that video game consoles are made. Since they control the Hardware and the Main software that will run on it (the OS) they will appear more stable than compared to Windows running on hardware made by 20 different manufacturers. I think it is amazing that windows even runs *at all*. The difference is that we are in fact not comparing Apples to Apples when comparing Mac OS and Win OSes to begin with. They may both be PC's and both do very similar things for the user but they are built to do things wildly differently. When you say "Macs are a far more cost-effective way to spend computer dollars" it is a very deceptive statement, because the hardware is generally more expensive, you have access to far less software, and if you need any of that *other* hardware or software you can't even use it. Don't think that if the software is a big enough seller that the vendor will decide to make a alternate version for Macs just because there is a potential 10% more of the market to gain, this just isn't true; vendors will ignore the Mac platform because it is generally considered irrelevant. Someone said something about not having to deal with viruses on Mac, if Mac was the dominant OS the virus writers would start writing them for Macs that is the way a virus writer thinks, make the virus affect as many people/machines as possible (which is another reason why viruses usually don't destroy your machine, if they did they would be less able to infect other machines and the viruses eventually dies because it kills all of its hosts) There is no technical reason that Macs are less prone to viruses it is simply because there are so many more written for Windows boxes that you see a drastic difference (Granted it is farily easy to write a virus to interact with Windows, all you've got to do is get the code to execute on the win box). Macs work, and have a very specific reason for existing, but as far as myself and a vast majority of computer users it is in fact incapable of doing what we want from our computer (without insane money, as money solves most technical problems) and is therefore not appealing to us. And just to note, I hate, I mean even *Loathe* Windows but can see very clearly that it is where all the software I want is, except in cases where it runs on a Unix/Linux server in which case the x86 hardware being cheaper keeps me from ever even considering Macs as a useful solution. I'm waiting for total windows application emmulation under Linux, then I will likely have found the most open platform OS, and can run most of the PC software made, and can use (then simply a matter of drivers) most hardware made. Thus causing me the least amount of pain to change the way I use my computer, moving to mac would be like throwing away all of my software liscenses, just to pay more and do less. (but to do those things more stably, I suppose) </Rant>