Well, a tiny PC at a similar price might well work, but afaik there isn't one. Which makes the whole argument of whether it would be designed nicely or work better somewhat moot. MiniMac is here now! WeePC is not! But I think you're lead up the garden path a bit when it comes to comparing packages and bundled extras. See, with a Mac, you don' t need so much in the way of bundled extras because there is so much really good freeware, shareware and cheapware available. Macs don't need to rely on the deceptive lure of bundled extras to be worth buying. As for the argument that Macs aren't as good as PCs because sometimes they break down, that is a bit specious. I've never said Macs never break down. Sometimes they do. But in my experience, Macs break down a lot less often than PCs, and they are much, much harder to fuck up in the general course of usage. I have had a lot less trouble using my Mac than I have my PC, even though my Mac is three or four years old, battered, worn and bits of it keep dying of old age. Most of the time, you plug something into a Mac and it *just works*, where was most of the time you plug something into a PC and it takes hours of installation and fiddling with settings and all sorts of other nonsense before it even recognises you've plugged something new in. But of course Mac hardware is not perfect, but on the whole it's a lot less imperfect than PC hardware. And even moreso for the software. Thing is, I think you're anti-Mac not because there are any good grounds to be, but because I once tried to persuade you of the beauty of Macs. We Macolytes can be our own worst enemies sometimes. Like bloggers, sometimes we become so enamoured of our Macs, or our blogs, that our very enthusiasm serve to raise hackles and put other people off. To which I feel I must reply, 'Get over it!'. :-p