Quote - A lot of us have invested money in software that is Windows only. That makes it hard to switch.

Not really. I dare say that it's not really hard at all.

Quote - Also, Apple is charging a premium for the same hardware I can buy for less. Since the OS is chip locked, that turns me off to MacOS. Windows is like the Hotel California ;)

$600 for a Core2Duo, 1GB RAM, and an 80GB HDD?

The nearest Dell Inspiron 530s desktop with those hardware specs (well, a slightly slower Core Duo processor) and Vista Home Basic will save you some dough, but to match OS feature for OS feature (OSX 10.4.6 vs. Vista), you'll be needing Vista Ultimate, which makes the difference $20 or so. With just Vista Basic, you save about $180 (XP isn't available for the low-end Inspiron desktop series @ Dell)

/P