yes your right caly... i got sucked into the wintel system soooo long ago... i just dont keep up to speed with other side anymore ;) i think the problem here lies in the fact that my pc is very specific... someone who buys a dorm-room pc or a middle range dell, isnt going to get the functionality and stability when using high-end applications like 3d studio max or maya ***(now im not saying a dell cant handle it because it really, really depends on the guts **stay focused, dorm-room pc's with the molded plastic shell and 9" viewing area). then you have the other pc users who cram periferals/controler cards with 8 drives! and addons onto their poor p3 jacked to a gig on a 250volt power supply! like you should expect things arent gona work and the stability is gona go out the window... we get a bad rap because of the mistakes alot of people make with their pc. having heard 'its so easy' over and over again, average-joe takes liscence with their os. you wouldnt beleive how many times ive had to talk people through problems theyve created for themselves simply because, as a pc owner, they feel obligated to upgrade and tweak and poke and prod on a regular basis. i blame tv. do mac users do this? i mean how much tweaking can you do to your mac over what/how you got it? would it be cheaper to buy a lower end mac and then upgrade with newer/faster hard drives? ram... what about the limited software titles? even if you dont use a mac for what everyone suggests it be used for, (graphics) is it really that much better than a pc for things like word processing? database management? can you make it into an sql server or hack out visual basic, c++? ouch! im just not sold... probably will be building my own computer every few years because i can.