In case it hasn't been pointed out yet later on... New iMacs have gone up in price by $100. Coupled with a large percentage of users experiencing problems with their systems....

Desktops... Apple is currently charging $400 for an industry-standard 512MB 168-pin 133MHz DIMM (2-2-2 I believe, but I can't recall right now).

And to compare an Apple desktop to a Xeon of all things. They have a great amount of pluses if you can find the rest of the hardware to take advantage: 1gigabit ethernet (useful as soon as you add a switch or hub). 64-bit PCI (useful once you find the appropriate card to make use of it - a nice SCSI card for instance). Now if you want to look at processing horsepower, forget about the single Photoshop test Apple bases their ads on.

I work on Macs evey day (as you know ) and I promote them when appropriate. But they are indeed over-priced when you compare them to many current-generation Athlon/Pentium-based machines (we don't have to bring up OS, though the choice (on all types of hardware, including Apple's) does affect performance).

Generally speaking, I find the Apple laptops to be a better buy than the desktops. And they're a lot cooler when comparing to any PC-laptop than when making a similar comparison using desktops.

Bruno