They keep asking me how come I payed so much for a laptop, but at the same time I get asked questions on how to fix something with their computers. I guess they just assume that I have problems too
The funny thing about that is that Macs are no longer more expensive. Peripherals, perhaps, but the machines themselves are quite competitive if not a little less expensive for a comparible quality Windows system.
Case in point: I just bought the mid-tier Macbook with the specs you see under my avatar. The price was $1299. For that I got a very capable, nice form-factor, well equipped computer. Plus some extras like built-in wireless, built-in camera, and bluetooth.
I got my wife the black version of the mid-tier Macbook with the identical configuration but black (and with a 120 Gig HDD instead of 80) and it was $1499. My wife loves it almost as much as she loves me and her cat, and that's saying a lot. So she asked me the other night as we were surfing the net with our respective Macs what were the comparative prices of other notebook manufactures with similar specs. I jumped onto Dell's site to see what their price/configuration would be if I wanted a similar computer in the Windows world. Once I was done configuring all the options (and to be fair, I included the camera too, but I also included Windows Vista Ultimate, which is what I consider Mac OS X to be the equivalent, er, superior) spec for spec the thing ended up costing $1,807! This is $100+ more expensive than my Macbook enedd up costing even when I threw in AppleCare and Parallels Workstation. Heck, my wife's Macbook came with a free printer!
Plus my Macbook will run Windows in Parallels, or Bootcamp. The Dell can only run Windows; no OS X.
There are a number of other value added things about the Macbook that I don't know if Vista/Windows XP comes with that are little, but end up being kind of cool. Exposé is one of them, Speech is another. Also things like not having balloons constantly bugging you when peripherals are connected, or wireless networks are connected to and things like that.
Now, when it comes to peripherals or upgrades, that might be a different thing. But that's nickel & dime stuff. I'm right now enjoying my Apple bluetooth wireless keyboard and Mighty Mouse and for some reason, I don't feel bad at all spending the few extra $$$'s for these fine devices (which also free up a USB port.)