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Yes even my cheap ass Dell came with a DVDR burner.

Your Dell can do all of the above. As well as Apple and a lot cheaper. One merely needs to take a little initiative and intelligence as far as downloading good programs for your computer. Applying a few patches to XP. Many people should go Apple since it's more idiot proof and good for the technophobe ladies.

Many people should go Apple since it's more idiot proof and good for the technophobe ladies.

Maybe you don't mean this, but your comment comes across as a little condescending. You can be very intelligent and know nothing about computers. That is not necessarily a bad thing! I am a computer engineer and as such am often inundated with complaints from my fellow computer engineers about how dumb the average computer user is: they can't figure out how to use anti-virus software, they can't figure out how to use ad-aware programs, install a wireless network, etc. I look at it from the other direction: why have we as an industry failed to make interfaces intuitive and consistent enough for the average person to do these things?

Again I'm parroting an earlier post of mine, but evidently it needs repeating: why should there be this expectation of the end user? MacOS X is very impressive in this sense. It has an intuitive and consistent interface, but you have the CLI for people who need more power so you don't give that up either.

Why does wanting your computer to just work, as it should, make you a technophobic lady? A computer is a tool, if you don't professionally have to understand how it works, have other hobbies that you enjoy already, and want the computer to let you do what you need without getting in your way, then buying a computer with an unobtrusive interface would in my opinion make you a savvy consumer not a Luddite.

I personally use Windows and Linux machines at home, those plus occasionally Solaris and a few other UNIX variants at work, and I'm certainly not afraid of getting my hands dirty. I have a Wallstreet G3 somewhere with OSX on it, but it is an older machine that I don't use, and I'm not even quite sure where I stuck it. So I'm not saying this as a Mac zealot.

But I am very impressed with MacOS X and the improvements Apple has been adding. I think that it is really raising the bar in a number of areas and other systems are going to follow.

-paridel