> from what i understand, macs are not very easily upgradeable.

Also bear in mind that Macs hold their value better than PCs. Whereas even a brand-name PC is just viewed as a box of parts, a Mac is always considered as a whole, so you can sell a two-year old desktop Mac and get around 50% of what you paid for it and for laptops, more like 50-60%.

I've got a PowerBook G4/400. I paid £2000 for it in 2000. It is currently worth about £1000 (any takers?). Few PC laptops would hold their value so well.

That said, it isn't as convienient as being able to just replace the motherboard and processor. But Apple realise that a lot of their customers are non-geeks, who if they were PC users, would just junk their entire PC (monitor, printer, scanner and all) when it gets to three years old and go buy another cheap bundle deal from somewhere dodgy like Gateway.