Quote - > 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

I'm not talking home users, but professionally as well. I can't run SQL Server on a Linux box and I am sure not going to be switching to Oracle any time soon. Windows server run ASP.NET, and I don't think you can do this with any great ease on a Linux server. Windows still dominates the corporate network, and I don't think this will ever change.

As far as home computers go, I don't buy prebuilts except for laptops. I can put together a machine far cheaper than anything Dell or Apple has to sell me.

Apple needs to wise up and start selling the OS independently of the machine. Only way I will switch.