"t helped that I didn't buy any extra ram from Apple (about £200) but spent £30 at Crucial and now have 4Gb."

Doesn't that sort of prove the point that Apple take the piss a bit with pricing? 85% of that Apple RAM was markup, FCOL!!

Apple are also far more expensive than a budget PC. Which, lets face it, is all most users need. Except gamers, and they'd not touch a Mac with a barge pole. Even my 5 year old Celeron's going along nicely with a friend from uni. Does everything they need.

Also, to PC Haterz: If the only problem with the PC is Vista, and the great thing about the Mac (now its x86) is OSX, you've gotta ask yourself if OSX is worth the markup in hardware cost over Vista. Or, more to the point, over XP. Or Linux (similar- if not better- functionality, can look better, simple if you never need to do anything clever, more software than the Mac and free. And slightly better games support).

In fact, *mental maths*, XP costs what, £60 as an OEM copy? Vista about £100?

Well OSX Leopard is £85. Not a horrendous difference, you might think. But then factor in the massive mark-up on the hardware (which you're legally required to run OSX on). Hardware you'll probably never need.

Macs really shouldn't have a leg to stand on commercially, they're clearly only bought by people after the image of a Mac user.

However, to clarify my icon, I'd like to say to Microsoft: BURN, DUDE! Your godawful software has made people go to your ridiculous "UNIX-in-a-pretty-skirt" competitors.