What The Hell...
 

...Is the big deal about Macs, I can't get a straight answer. The entry level Mac is $1000, and for that you get the same system specs as my 6 year old desk top. Everyone says it's worth it for the operating system, so what's so great about it? Other than the fact that it comes with a program that teaches you to play the guitar. (Yo Bro)

Is it because I don't own a Prius, live in Berkley, or own things made from recycled Starbucks cups?

Minis start at $600 and MacBooks at $1000, all Core 2 Duos. Your 6 year old desktop can't touch that.

The OS and hardware, just work, and do so well together almost all the time. Windows PCs suck by comparison.

At one point, the fastest Windows laptop was a Mac...

Apple designs good $4!+ and asks a premium for it. Pay it or don't.

Try uninstalling a piece of Windows software vs. a Mac. A true differentiator between agony and elegance.

I like my little powerPC I got for free. It seems to work really well with interneting and the likes.

Do you really need a Mac?

Finally a straight forward answer! Thank you Dean. I was sick of getting no answers from people who swear by Mac yet know nothing about them. I hate salesmen, and ones with ponytails push me over the edge. I want to drag them outside and beat the smug out of them.

While everything Dean said is basically true, Macs are still overpriced due to the brand name alone. Apple can get away with it because all those people that don't give you a straight answer about why they think Macs are worth the premium buy them simply because they're fanatics.

That said, I am posting this from my iPod touch, and I do own a Mac mini. But I did buy the iPod used, and I do think the base mini should either cost $400 or it should come with twice the memory and three times the disk space.

I love my $700 (new, shipped) gaming laptop running Vista. *Runs*

(But it took lots of tweaking and finally getting good drivers for the Nvidia video.)

Are you running Directx 10?

Yes.

Yeah, its basically a premium that many people are willing to pay for.

Apple controls the hardware and the software, which makes for a smoother integration. If MS wanted to lock everyone down to one or two choices for every component, they could also make things run as smoothly, and there wouldn't be such a thing as dll hell. And, they can also make all the software integrate together very nicely too, since they write a lot of it as well.

That said, they usually do put the latest hardware in there, and charge 20-30% more for the "complete package"

IMO, its the difference between a nice Toyota and a lower end Lexus. Both have the same components under the hood and both can get you from point a to point b relatively comfortably. One is just a little nicer (in a matter of opinion), and has the brand name to demand the premium.

The files are in the computer.

I just got a new Lappy through work. My old machine was an ASUS dual-core AMD with ATi 2600HD graphics, which was a great idea with poor driver support. I had blown Vista away and got XP running with hacked video drivers, except that no one driver would run both OpenGL and DirectX well. So, I could optimize for CAD or GIS, but not both. That computer would have lasted me at least another year or two, but opportunity came along, so....

The carnage is over with this ASUS G50VT. I'm getting used to Vista, but the machine is so over-powered I don't care. People have succesfully got XP running on these, but I don't have the extra week to spare right now. I will probably slowly prune back the extra junk as I get familiar.

T9400, 2x320gb7200rpm, 4gb, GeForce 9800M GS 512mb

^Awesome. Be sure to at least try the new Nvidia Notebook Driver. It made an amazing difference in gaming for mine. http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_drivers.html

Sorry Bob.

Oh, Win v. Mac - since XP SP2, I really don't know how much reliability difference there is between Mac and PC. As long as you don't buy a POS PC they really are very stable and since everything you can think of is written for them, if there is a problem, it is usually with the software company, not the OS or hardware.

Yeah, Mac is in many ways more elegant, and has great marketing appeal, but they aren't the end-all that the bearded suspenders guys claimed anymore.

My last Mac, a PowerPC 520c lappy, was a hardware glitching nightmare. OS8 FTL.