...I just happen to think that the Mac OS sucks. I don't love Windows; I just hate it less than I hate the Mac OS.

Sure, it's pretty, but all of the low-level stuff I use day in and day out is buried. I don't want to go digging for the PING tool; I want to click on the command prompt on my taskbar and type in PING. And so on...

I'm still running Windows 2000 on five of my six machines. It has all of the functionality I need without any of the annoying "big brother" stuff that was added to XP and Vista. My lone Vista machine came with that OS and doesn't have drivers for earlier versions of Windows or I'd have stripped that bloated pig off a long time ago.

I've spent a lot of time with both OS X and the last 7 versions of Windows, and the Mac OS just isn't an operating system for grownups.

Yes, Farhad, the Mac/PC debate should be relegated to dustbin of history. It's old news. In Japan, personal computer sales are going down. They will soon go down here also. Phones, TV's, videogames, and PDA's are all also now part of the computing ecology; an ecology which is growing larger all the time.

The fault line has shifted - quite substantially. Today's zeitgeist concerns free/open vs. proprietary; not Steve vs. Bill (a real yawner, kind of like comparing beltway democrats and republicans, who are all basically the same). The fan boys all bought their iPhones and now what? Leopard? Phghght.

Neither Apple nor Microsoft stands a chance of remaining relevant ten years from now. Consumer computing is becoming entirely commoditized. Who's going to bundle a $150 operating system and $500 worth of so-called productivity applications on a computing device (whatever it is) that costs $150; when all the very same functionality, nay, better functionality, is available for absolutely nothing? Companies with a death wish, that's who. Anyone who tries to dominate the center with proprietary software is doomed. The only place proprietary software stands a chance is in specialized markets like videogames; where artistic creativity, not the umpteenth implementation of an office suite or drawing program, will distinguish one vendor from another. Open standards, not Steve's turtleneck, is the new cool. Get with the program, so to speak.

As for the resale value of a computer tipping the value balance. That is really weak, my friend. How many people do you know who take the time to try selling their four year old computers? Right.

Enjoy your iPhone, because Apple's (and Microsoft's) shiny days in the sun are numbered.

One reason that PCs don't hold their resale value is because the prices get better every year. For $500 next year, you can get more memory, more RAM, faster speeds, then $600 this year. So why on earth would you possibly buy an OLD PC when a new one is only a little more expensive and a lot better? After all, you need only go to Circuit City to find a basic model for $300 without peripherals, so why spend even $300 on a used model?

Macs don't advance all that much year after year, and you can assume the price isn't going to come down. Competition does matter, and the competition in the PC industry is ferocious, especially in pricing. Mac has no competition. If you want a Mac, you either spend the money, or get a used one a bit cheaper. You don't have any options.'

Computers aren't like cars, and you simply can't make "resale value" part of your equation like you can with cars. I drive a 2000 Honda. It still works fine, and has most of the features of a new Honda... and so it makes sense to buy a used Honda.

But would anyone buy a 2000 PC? No. Not because they won't still work (I'm sure most of us have a couple PCs from that era in our office or home, and they still run), but rather because the new ones cost so little and do so much more that it is not cost-effective to forego buying a new one. It certainly makes no sense to buy a used one.

Heck, there are so many PCs out there, we give them away. I give mine away to a local school to give as rewards for students who get good grades.

Macs are at a premium partly because they're so rare-- only 5% of the market. PCs are not rare, hence no premium.

Anyone who buys a computer thinking of the resale value is missing the point. Next year's new model will be cheaper and better. We've had 25 years of experience with this-- you're not going to convince anyone that it's a GOOD thing that a two-year old used computer is better than a brand new one. Well, you might be able to convince the Apple cult about that, but in my experience, you can convince them of anything, as long as you slap an Apple logo on it.

The higher resale price that Macs can fetch could be based on the limited supply of Mac computers. If they enjoyed a larger market share of the new computer market, there would be more used Macs for sale, and this would drive the price down. I think that is what has driven down the price of used PCs, a glut in the market.

Again with the crap Farhad.

First off, a year ago the price of RAM was running well above today's ram pricing. Say 2 GIGS of RAM then would cost you about 200 bucks. Today its well under 100. So back then the 1.5 GIG difference in your comparison HP and the mini was a substantial value gain.

The difference in hard drive size less so, but 250 GIGS vs 80 is still a big drop.

So given that a big part of the cost difference was the premium for the extra RAM, the depreciation difference is a lot smaller than you make it out to be.

Secondly, if you pay more than 275 to 400 bucks for an HP windows type machine, you can't use the internet or just like spending more than you have to. But then again, that's second nature to Apple fanboys.