Matt, I'm over-simplifying? A FREE Windows Vista PC is still a worse deal financially than any Mac.

This friend would have loved to get a Mac, but thought they were too expensive, so they spent $1200+ on this HP notebook. The machine, outside of the problems I've mentioned here (which are not solvable according to hundreds of posts on the net), is really a piece of crap. Sure, it's shiny and has polished chrome plastic things all over it and swirly decorations, but it's really poorly built. Has a small screen, but a numeric keypad! A tiny tiny tiny track pad that defaults to a speed so slow that you have to swipe your finger across it no less than three times to get the cursor from one side of the screen to the other.

I'm sorry, but the only way these vendors continue to sell machines is because most people don't know any better.

If that friend had called me first with their desire to pick up a machine, I would have made sure they got a Macbook.

If I knew for certain I wouldn't run into driver and other problems, I'd offer to wipe their machine and put XP on it. But I'm confident to a high degree (it's HP) that I'll have all kinds of driver issues going from the pre-installed "Vista Home Crap" to XP. I can't believe there hasn't been more legal action against MS due to Vista. It's utterly terrible and practically unusable. It's the most poorly designed UI and operating system I've ever used. And I'm including GeOS and the c64's command-line here.

The argument used to revolve around apples and oranges. Now, it's just about wanting a piece of fruit (of any kind) and getting a mouth full of sand instead.