I've never been a big fan of Mac for many reasons -- The first being, I was always tired of hearing "how much better Macs are" from people who did nothing more than check email, surf the net, and do some simple graphics in photoshop (all which you can do, I should remind, on any cheap chinese PC).
After the FreeBSD based MAC O/S 10 Macs hit the market, it was "because you never have to restart the computers and they're more stable than Windows." This coming from people who didn't have a clue what a console (or command, you pick) window was, and didn't really know any Unix stuff at all. In short, they checked email, surfed the net, and did some minor graphic work on family photos. They never needed to leave their PC on 24/7, so why this would be an advantage to them always remained a mystery. Granted, Windows is buggy and unstable, but I didn't see why somebody, especially these people, should be spending 30% more on a computer for what they did.
Lastly, the "main" reason was that Bill Gates was evil and was a "monopolist" -- which I find silly, as Macs are 1. more expensive, 2. proprietary hardware, and 3. Apple is always trying to force you to use all of their stuff (buy an iPod, and you MUST use iTunes to put music on it, for example).
Aside from these "minor" points -- Macs have come down in price, have improved their performance (thanks to Intel chips -- usually found in PCs for the last 10 years), have become less proprietary (you can use external mice, monitors, keyboards), and basically, have become almost tolerable to me to where, when looking for a cheaper, smaller notebook, Macbooks are almost being considered -- that is, until I saw the price difference for the BLACK one. (Note: I just noticed it has a larger 80GB harddrive, hence the price difference -- but $200 more is a lot of money for 20 GBs more ... it's an obvious sales tactic, which is still cheap.)
Now, having reluctantly purchased a black iPod Nano for Xmas (nice), maybe a black MacBook would be a good match? Sure, but for 200 dollars MORE than the white one (as far as I can see, this is the only difference -- 200 dollars!), you've got to be out of your mind. What kind of crap is that? They didn't double-price on the Nanos, so why do it with the MacBooks? Obviously, they should have learned that black is probably a bit more popular than white in terms of the Nanos and Video iPods, so they could have segued into MacBook production with this in mind and kept the prices the same? Nah, that'd be too hard ... so, knowing that their "loyal" users would want a black one, what do they do to repay this loyalty? They charge 200 bucks more for a 10 dollar piece of plastic! Woot, woot! Bill Gates, eat your heart out! (Note: See correction above, but the addition of the 80GB into this same Mac IS still a low-blow ...smart sales team, though)
Knowing all this, I'll have to keep my sites on the cheaper and lighter Averatec 2200 series notebook (4lb 12" Averatec vs. 5.2lbs 13" MacBook). Being 400 dollars cheaper, I think this will be the best bet (sure, I won't be as "cool" as the soccer mom on the airplane with the MacBook, but I'll be able to do anything on the Averatec that she'll EVER use her MacBook for). :-)
Or, maybe I'll just give in to peer pressure :-)
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