Quote:
I would still have to get past other things, high prices being the biggest.

The default configuration for the tower-style Mac (Mac Pro) on the Apple store has these specs:
  • Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processors
  • 1GB memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory
  • 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive
  • 16x double-layer SuperDrive
Their price for it is $2499.

An equivalently configured Dell (Precision 490):
  • Two Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5150 2.66GHz, 4MB L2,133
  • 1GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 533MHz, ECC (2 DIMMS)
  • 256MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 3450, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA
  • 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM NCQ Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst Cache
  • 16X DVD+/-RW w/ Cyberlink PowerDVD™ and Roxio Creator™ Dell Ed
goes for $3287. (The video card was the cheapest 256MB card Dell offered on that system.)

If you select the only direct video-card match (the 512MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 4500, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA), it becomes $4148 vs $4212, still a good $50 cheaper.

Do you still think Macs are more expensive? Okay, fair enough: most PCs don't come with Xeons. And the Mini is slightly more expensive and slower than the cheapest Dell PC you could get. (I tried and couldn't come up with a good equivalent, but we're talking the Mini at $600 and a Dell at about $400.) It also doesn't have expansion slots. So you have an argument if you're trying to buy the absolute cheapest thing possible.

But the notion that Macs are head-and-shoulders more expensive than PCs has been a lie for a long time, as long as you compare app -- uh ... oranges to oranges. It is also true that, before the Mini came along, there was no stripped-down Mac you could buy, which is relevant. And the Mini is more expensive. (Actually, it'd probably be more accurate to compare it against a Shuttle or something like that.)

So there's a lot more to it than just "Macs are too expensive". Not that that statement is totally inaccurate, either.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk