A few years ago, if you held Mac products up against generic PCs with equivalent specs, the prices were roughly the same. That's just not true any more, even with our generous university discount. A Mac mini "server" (quad core 2.0GHz i7) with minimum RAM, and 750GB HD + 250GB SSD would cost me $1573. Add $80 for a 3rd-party 16GB upgrade kit, and add another $800 for that swanky Dell monitor or $949 for the Apple 27" display. Total cost per seat, with the Dell monitor, $2453.

So, that would have me spending $400 more per seat versus the generic CyberPowerPC option, which has a radically faster CPU (3.4GHz vs. 2GHz, and with a bigger cache), never mind internal expansion options.

Yeah, the licensing thing is a drag. I'm more concerned about the pain-in-the-ass factor of maintaining Hackintoshes.