"After just a year or two of use, a Windows machine gets so gummed up with spyware, viruses and other nasty stuff that it seems malicious to ask anybody for money for the thing.

Wild. I guess I must be tying this on an ~imaginary~ PC that I bought in 2003 with an Athlon XP1600+ processor which runs Windows 2000 Pro just seemlessly. (and WoW, too.)

My computer before that was a shiny iMac (snow) with MacOS 9.1. Then OSX came out, and my *new* iMac couldn't run it except under incredibly clunky (unusable) speeds. So I went back to 9.1. For which Apple made no other program upgrades ever. It was OSX or bust. And to run OSX, you needed - surprise - a new computer.

When I went to the store to upgrade my video card from it's (pathetic) 8g just one year later, I was told "sorry, that cannot be upgraded. ever."

I tried to salvage it by running Linux on it, but the two PPC linux distros were next to impossible to get on there. I had a lot of help from a friend to finally get it loaded only to discover that it ran into several problems which made it essentially a giant paperweight.

Apple has built in obsolescence, snazzy design, and marketing as it's foundations for profit. NOT long term usability.

MY PC can be upgraded. It can adapt. Eventually a new killer app will come along and compel me to buy a new motherboard and CPU which will necessitate a whole new box, but this thing will read email etc. for pretty much as long as I keep good care of it. (no spyware or viruses, here, thanks. I know what I'm doing.) Eventually, I'll probably donate it to a non-profit.

And the price? My box, with all the subsequent upgrades has totaled about $800. My iMac before that was $2000. My friend's new iMac that she bought last year was $2100. (Her design school practically forced her to get an Apple.) That's not a $100 difference. That's a ~world~ of difference.

But your computers are very pretty. I'll give you that.

Mr Manjoo is absolutely correct about the resale value of Macs compared to PCs.

Let's also note that the total cost of ownership is less for a Mac than a PC.

Consider how much money a PC user pays to buy and upgrade their anti-virus software

every time they turn around. Also, most folks end up having a PC repair house clean out the

viruses and worms that dominate the PC world. If you need to pay a PC rep[air house $100 a year to perform those tasks, the costs to own that PC rise considerably.

Bottom line ...

Macs are easier to use.

Macs are more fun to use.

Macs just work ... period.

Stop the suffering ... buy a Mac now with Leopard.

I agree with your analysis; total cost of a system has to include software, service, care-and-feeding, and protection. Mac is cheaper.

With respect to monopoly, I share your comments about Microsoft ... it's why I switched.

And, it's beginning to become apparent that Apple, as sole supplier for their hardware/software, must take better care of their customers.

When things don't go as planned, Apple is the gorrila for their own market.

It has become a bit worrying for me.

I'm not insulted at all, because as many have said, I don't need to justify my purchase, which seems to be a common attack-line against Mac owners. My point was to say that you are in the minority. The fact that you like to build your own rigs is great - I like to build my own engines for my race car, but it's a non-starter. Perhaps I am in the minority as well, but I get tired of hearing this sanctimonious BS from people (present company excluded) who trash Macs simply by virtue of the fact that they can build their own PC. You say your birdhouse can "kick my birdhouse's tail", but you need to append that with "at what I use it for". I'm sure that's true. And my plain-vanilla, store-bought MacPro birdhouse will kick your birdhouse's butt at what I use it for. Again I ask with respect, so what?

Respectfully again, you don't know a thing about me. I have built PCs - 24 of them to be exact, to be used as Nuendo and Gigastudio workstations in a well-known recording studio in Los Angeles. It's been my job for almost 20 years. Of those 24 PC workstations, less than half are still in service, not so much because they were unreliable (on the whole, they were OK not great on comparison), but because they have been replaced by Macs that can do the same thing with less headache. I've said it here once before - of the near 50 workstations we own, 90% of our tech time is spent dealing with the PCs. That's not a shot at them, that's just my reality. You think that doesn't effect bottom line? In my reality, when you factor in everything, the Macs, even the fully-blown Mac Pros, come in way cheaper than the PCs over the long haul. So while it may not have been proven to you that they are cheaper, there are certainly examples out there that have reflected the point of the article and that you continue to dismiss.

You talk about choices. Also referring to my world - it simply isn't a choice when bottom line is so severely affected by the reliable performance of our workstations. We have an operating budget of close to a half-million dollars a year (about 25% devoted to equipment). That's a lot in this business but by no means over the top in comparison to other production facilities. Do you think for a minute that if reliability were increased by having PCs instead of Macs, regardless of cost, even ones expertly built by someone (assuming for a minute that I may suck at it!), that we wouldn't have taken that route years ago? I said it here before - look at every major studio in the country with operating budgets similar to mine. It's been widely noted that most software is available for both platforms (with a few exceptions of Mac-only software). Initial out-of-pocket expense is not an issue to most of us - we just want what works. If any of us could eke out even 25% more reliability out of the PCs vs the Macs, the switch would have been made already, especially considering the declining budgets in the entertainment biz. Believe me, at my studio we are constantly looking for excuses to switch over to PC workstations (perhaps in some small way so we can be the "different" ones in the industry by effectively using PCs instead of Macs). We simply can't do it. Call that a choice if you want, but it really isn't.

My point here is that the one thing most miss is the whole "what works for you" thing. You touched on it but only before taking more swipes at the platform. I never said my choice was superior. You interpreted it that way, which is what usually happens when we dare to defend OUR choice. Jake said it exactly right: "See, when I read these letters, I don't see Mac users trying to convince PC users to switch. I see PC users ridiculing Mac users for their choice of computers. That's exactly the way I read it as well.

I also get tired of seeing all these ridiculous comments such as those from vishnu13 (addressed earlier) and sagcat , who said "Apple has built in obsolescence, snazzy design, and marketing as it's foundations for profit. NOT long term usability.". Really? Again, someone who is making a blanket statement about the platform as a whole without even attempting to do a little research on the matter. Perhaps sagcat can explain to me why I've still got half-a-dozen G3s operating without a hitch, or why I've got a handful of G4s that haven't been been turned off since 2004 and are still going crash-free. Again, this is my experience, YMMV, but I'm not making blanket statements about his chosen platform based on my experience with just a handful of machines. And speaking of doing research, with all due respect to sagcat, the fact that he didn't do more research on his iMac before he bought it is his own problem, not Apple's. It was widely stated that if upgrading is your thing, get a tower and not an iMac.

Regarding the single-button mouse. I don't know any Mac power-users who actually use the thing (though I'm sure they are out there). There are tons of great mice/trackballs available for Mac (preferred choice in my biz is usually the Kensington TurboMouse). So Apple gives you a crappy mouse, whatever. Still doesn't make the platform suck.