The computer cost me $1600 back then, and the 10 years I've used it, it cost me $160 a year when you break it down. I know the resale value is nil, but the parts I used to upgrade it were able to be used in other computers.
My Dell Dimension 4700C was a steal at $327 or something back in 2005. Came with a 17 flat screen LCD and a 3.2 P4 processor with a 40gb drive and 256 mb of memory. I added 4gb of memory ($150 steal) another multitude of hard drives (5 400/500gb drives) less than $80 each when they were fairly new to the market.
I still would like a Mac just for the sake of owning one and for curiosities sake. I mean there is nothing right now where I am kicking myself in the butt, saying I wish I had a Mac because I can't do "x". That said it would still be nice, and then after owning both, I could compare both. If I got bored with the Mac, at least I wouldn't lose much cash, especially since I'd be buying used to begin with.
“I still would like a Mac just for the sake of owning one and for curiosities sake.”
Same here, but is that any reason to buy the Mac Pro simply because Apple refuses to offer a mid-priced tower with desktop components (do you really need workstation Xeon chips and fully buffered, i.e. bottlenecked, RAM? Oh, for $2499 you will only get 1GB of it, so get ready to pay for more since many Pro users recommend AT LEAST 4GB!)?
I find it funny that the iMac-vs.-Dell photo features an XPS, a mid-priced tower that Apple has no comparison for. Many users want to pick their own monitor. With Apple you are stuck with the comical Mini or the overkill Pro (for perspective, when was the last time you or someone you know purchased a Dell XEON workstation?).
If you drop the whole workstation baloney, Dell has an XPS on their site right now for $2439 that has an Intel Core 2 Q6600 Quad-Core (8MB L2 cache,2.4GHz,1066FSB/Blu-Ray recordable/nVidia 756mb 8800 GTX/2GB ram and a 20” monitor (which I’d nix and add their 24”, but at least you get one!)
When it comes to a system like that Apple makes ZERO sense (they don’t offer such a thing: no Blu-Ray, no GeForce 8800, no 2GB ram, no VISTA...that’s a little joke for you, SWORD!).