[Swordmaker]

Maybe if Apple wasn't into gouging its customers they would sell more PC's. What do you think ? It is very shortsighted of Apple to price themselves out of the market, I'm sure Bill Gates laughs at Apple everytime he looks at his net worth.

Last time I looked the street price of an Apple eMac (800Mhz, G-4, 60G, 17" flat screen monitor, 56k modem, 10/100 NIC) was approximately $794. I have seen them for as low as $699. The eMac comes with a nice software package which includes Appleworks, iTunes, iPics, iMovie, Mail, Safari, and several 3D games.

The g3 iBookwith similar software is under $1000.

The new G5 can be had for under $2000 and most columnists are comparing the G5s to $6-8000 workstations with one even complaining that Apple is mis-defining the $3000 Dual G5 as a desktop computer and not a "workstation."

People are complaining that the OS upgrade with major revisions and a host of programs are $129 (street price $99) but don't seem to complain that MicroSoft asks $179 for XP.

[general_re]

...one even complaining that Apple is mis-defining the $3000 Dual G5 as a desktop computer and not a "workstation."

That's not an entirely unfair complaint - for the same price as that dual G5, I can get a single-processor 900 MHz Itanium2 workstation from HP that runs within 90% of it, performance-wise. For as much hype about the G5 as there's been, I'm surprised it's not faster - a single 1.5 GHz I2 box is significantly faster than that dual 2 GHz G5 box. Wonder what that means for the "megahertz myth" ;)

[John Lenin]

I build my own IBM PC clones for under $400 and get 4 times the gigahertz for my money. Thats what I'm talking about, for a comparable Apple I have to go to the top of the line, usually in the $2500 to $3500 price range.