So many things wrong with that silly column, I'm not even going to bother. Suffice to say, my 12 year-old could build a PC for eight hundred simoleans that would smoke an eMac or iMac or whatever Jobs is calling his latest marketing gizmo (I'm personally waiting for the oMac and the uMac), software included. If I helped him, it would be under $500. And that's the cool thing about hated PCs -- any kid can pick up spare parts and start building his own machine. Snag a Linux distro, get to coding and hacking and fooling around. Not a bad thing to have happening.

You know, there used to be an appreciation for such grass-roots shade-tree things, but I imagine you elites will keep telling us dummies we're dumb, and we should get with that buttoned-up, top-down, corporate-controlled program. [snicker]

Neither I nor the article are knocking home-built PC's. If building your own Mac were an option, I'd be doing it for sure.

But if you started a wee little bidness manufacturing those PC's, you would, I strongly suspect, have to sell them for at least $800. Remember, when you build your own, you are not paying wages and benefits to the worker. Nor rent nor advertising nor taxes nor office overhead nor insurance.

The point of the article is that $800+ is really what those PC's sell for. It's pure bait 'n switch, and probably few people actually end up with a $500 PC.

The other point is that the eMac gives you a lot more value for your $800. (Though if you only want to surf the web or make spreadsheets, a lot of that value may not be valuable to you.)

What does your smokin' PC cost if you include really good software for DV and music editing?

I seriously question whether all that iSoftware is valuable to the majority of aeiouMac buyers. But to answer the question, I would imagine I could find DV/music software for Linux for next to nothing. No, it wouldn't be all streamlined and integrated and purty, but that gets me back to the shade-tree, dirty-knuckles part of computers that I really love (and what I think jump-starts a lot of whiz-bang computer careers, just from anecdotal evidence.)

I'm mainly poking fun at Appleheads. They remind me a lot of my Democrat friends on Nov. 1. I personally hate Apple...I'm just not going to pay their hardware prices for vendor lock-in, and I don't like their cultish corporate attitude, but that's personal. At the end of the day, I don't care what you buy (or build)...just buy lots and lots of storage. And network them, too. Lots of storage and lots of networks make me happy. Can I interest you in some networked storage, perhaps???

PS For giggles, I'll go try and "build" a $500 screamer, mit softenwaren.

"I seriously question whether all that iSoftware is valuable to the majority of aeiouMac buyers."

It is. The suite is a standard preload.

Standard pre-load don't make it valuable. It makes it available.

Scott, you are right, if we are talking about knuckle-draggers like you (ooops, sorry, I meant to say dirty-knuckle guys). But the poor dumb schleps who buy from the Gateway Interweb site aren't you.

But really the point is not which system is better--that depends on what you want to do. It's those endless complaints that Macs are much more expensive that bug me, and are, I strongly suspect, not true. It's like trying to chase down an urban legend...the people who are computing for sustantially less than I am always seem to be somewhere else. I never actually find them. (Except maybe you, Scott!)

Maybe they exist, but all PC users I know who buy for less always have to add some card or gadget to make their machines do something a Mac does out of the box. Or take classes to understand their software, or hire consultants just to make their network function. Or they have an IT guy in a firm of only 20 people. Or they buy a lemon and toss it and then buy the right machine (and brag about the low price). Or lose long hours (or days) fighting some virus.

And then they have the gall to assume they are more thrifty than me, with my "expensive" Macs!

Let me know how the "screamer" goes...

Comparing a home-built computer to an off-the-shelf computer is like comparing a home cooked meal to a restaurant meal. If you can't do it cheaper at home, there's something bad wrong.

The flip side is that dang Mac urban legend: all those folks that are mixing demo "tapes" for Warner Bros., editing their Cannes submission, and publishing their Pulitzer-winning photography books.

Viz cooking: not just cheaper, but faster & better, chief. It's a good analogy, though -- if all you ever do is eat in restaurants, you'll never be any kind of a cook.

John, I just went through the Gateway site, and got the 3200S with the top-end optical burner drive, plus a hard drive that's twice as big, for $619. $719 if you're too snooty or citified to snip off a label and lick a stamp to get your rebate. Us knuckle-draggers have been doing that for years, so that's no biggie. If I don't like MS-Works (which works just fine, by the way), I get OpenOffice. If I don't like Outlook Express (which works just fine but *is* virus-prone), I get Thunderbird. If I don't like Windows Media Player (and I don't), I get Winamp or MusicMatch. I get anti-virus software (never ever been a problem for yall) for free, and I get malware protection for free. I can buy any game in the universe and play it, too.

Here's another biggie for this knuckle-dragger -- every one of my online poker rooms is supported, so I can turn that $180 I just saved into $thousands more for trips to Aruba. Try that with your Macintosh, bub ;-)

Looks like a very nice machine....