For the sake of all the confused souls who read mine and Melissa's Mac warz, I have done some research on the commercial (rather than the technical) aspect of the debate, hoping most readers will be able to deal with these numbers and understand what I'm getting at: Macs are good computers. They're easy, and they really work. Most of the time. More than PCs, I think. But they cost a lot more. And perform a lot less. And they restrict your choice about what you can and can't do with your own computer in a way that makes me very uncomfortable.

So here is my research, plain and simple. Read it and make your own conclusions.

	PC	Mac
CPUs	2 x AMD Athlon MP 2200+	2 x PowerMac G4 1000
Motherboard	Tyan S2460 Server board	Dual G4 board w/ Xscale
RAM	Samsung 512MB PC2700	512MB PC2700
Video	Leadtek GF4Ti4600	GF4Ti4600
Hard drive	Maxtor 80GB QuietDrive	80GB
Optical	Lite-On 40x12x48 CDRW & 16x48 DVD-ROM	16x10x8x32 Combo drive
Sound	Creative Audigy w/ IEEE-1394 (aka FireWire) port	Some sound
LAN	LNE100TX 5.1 10/100	na
Keyboard / Mouse	Microsoft Natural Keyboard + IntelliMouse Explorer v3a	some keyboard, 1 button mouse
Case	Enermax FS-501B, Black	Cute case
display, speakers, portable music player, wireless LAN, modem, SCSI	na	na
Total:	$1,408.00 from newegg.com	$2,720.00 from store.apple.com

In case you thought I was cutting costs or the PC system doesn't quite stack up with the Mac:

• AMD's K7 x86 CPUs have killer floating point units. See: here (notice the benchmarks are for the 1900+ while here we have the 2200+)
• Tyan is the world leader in server-class mission critical motherboards.
• Samsung RAM has the best reputation for longevity and low latency.
• Leadtek constantly produces best performing and coolest (as in, the opposite of "warm") running video cards.
  BTW, if I was really buying a PC, I'd have opted for a GF4Ti4200 card, because it is not much slower, but costs only $130 compared to $240 with the 4600. Apple won't let me choose, so in this comparison I used the pricier card, although it is already not the performance leader. ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro ($358) is. See: here and here.
• Maxtor's D740X series of IDE drives are the second highest performing drives (Western Digital's WD1200JB ($162) are the first) available. Their Fluid Bearing Motor system makes these drives the quietest of the performance-oriented drives. The 80GB model costs $118. See here for details.
• Lite-On burners have the best overall performance with cloning data and audio CDs while being relatively quiet. The DVD drive is excellent as well. See: here and here.
• Creative's Audigy sound card is the current market leader in home audio equipment. See: every street corner.
• Linksys has a reputation for producing quality cards at much lower prices than Intel's or 3Com's. Techs worldwide swear by those cards.
• Microsoft's keyboards and mice are second only to Logitech's, while some people claim the exact opposite is the truth.
• Enermax is world leader in quality cases for "regular" use (Lian-Li specialize in "cool" cases). Their PSUs are considered to be the best of the currently available.

Note I used a single company/shop to get all the parts. Using this site, it is possible to find much lower prices for the parts I have listed, but that makes shipping and warranty a bit more complicated so I avoided it in this comparison.

Don't forget to look at the benchmarks.

I rest my case.