I purchase my computer from Costco which provides free tech support and found myself calling them regularly. They have access to Microsoft and Manufacturer senior support techs if they run into a problem and did a great job helping me. I got into the registry to enable my e-mail web links to go to Firefox and not Explorer that kept crashing and shutting down.

Because of the time I've been spending I was forced to try a MAC. In look at the MAC, I discovered the $200 software I was looking for and wasn't working as well on Vista, was not a good a the intergrated software already on a PC. When I looked at the hardware components on a MAC, I found them to be of higher quality graphics and sound cards and running great with a better looking screen. I was told that MAC actually run Vista and XP better, because they perform faster using their OS.

I was also fortunate enough to get a MAC Pro for $1500.00 out the door because it was a model that was just discontinued and would be replaced by a 2.4 GHz model and I didn'r require a TV tuner or Memory slots because it used firewire.

I now have a MAC and today is my first day trying it. The MAC is more appealing to eye, and I have just loaded the OS Leopard and in the process of adding 58.5MB of updates. It seems like a nice system, but I have no prior MAC knowledge. Is it better than XP, I'm not sure. Is it better than what Vista is suppose to be, it seems like there are a lot of trade offs.

Do I hate MS or Vista or think it's horrible? No, I do not. I wouldn't mind trying it in the future when the development is complete. In my case I didn't have time to wait.

The main people losing here are the Box Makers/computer manufactures. Because they must endure more problems associated with Vista and field the abuse for in industry they love and have a passion for.

The problem the MS has are companies that because of the economy or lack of development on MS part, hardware manufactures have not all gotten around developing software to run on Vista. At the same time people are rushing to try to integrate MS Office packages with their OS. When that happens, other OS will be more competitive and there's one big reason for Business users to try different OS. At the same time MS is rushing to release their next OS Vienna and are again talking abut stripping off more off their plan for earlier release.

The longer I'm with Apple and their OS, the greater the possibility I will say longer.

I have no dog in the fight. I am just trying to get the best value for my dollar

Must be the hardware sales. Or is it?

Apple is 3X the value of Dell at $45 billion with 25% more total cash than Dell. Apple could BUY Dell without much trouble. I wouldn't go ordering tombstones for Apple any time soon.

So I have to ask – with the same hardware used between them, why are Windows machines worth so much less than Macs? Does the Windows OS degrade the commodity hardware that much? Apparently it does.

The latest switcher was yesterday when a guy I work with returned his second HP Vista laptop (after a week of struggling with both of them) for a full refund and will now buy a Mac laptop. Why? The Vista OS didn't work and the HP tech support people told him to return it for a refund because… it will never work. Yup, HP told him to do that.

Why give up so quickly? Because we've got a lot of trouble free Macs where I work and he had no idea there was an alternative until he actually saw them. All it takes is exposure and you realize it has nothing to do with being a "cult". You realize the blind "cult" followers actually belong to Microsoft, not Apple.

I have to laugh at those who say Mac's are "closed and proprietary." The only thing "closed and proprietary" about Mac's are their logic boards. I don't care. I've never had one fail and processor upgrades are a rip-off. You can run X-Windows on Mac OS X (because, unlike Windows, it's a UNIX variant) and there are plenty of open source recompiles for it. Windows, is the truly closed and proprietary system, but if you really want to, you can run it on a Mac.

All that aside, AAPL had been trading at a P/E of well over 30 for some time. A correction was in order.

But let's not let logic and facts get in the way of negative spin and zealotry…

But…..

For some reason, the press can't stand it when Apple does well. Jobs takes what others has failed at and makes it beautiful and functional. Does it cost a little more? Yep. Does it actually work well? Yep. More than I can say for any other tech company. How do I factor this? Experience. I've had 22 Apples and 24 Windows/DOS computers in the last 24 years. Guess which ones I'm still using. PCs (which in reality Macs do fall into that category) don't last. I have an Apple IIgs that I still do video overlay on when I need an 80's retro look for projects. Look at how many programs are out there for Windows! I hear that alot, but honestly, how many word processors do you use? Games are where the PCs lead, but that puts them in the "Toy" category with the XBox360, which I love except that it crapped out after 9 months. My Nintendo 64 is still cranking away (gotta love GoldenEye). I've thrown away more PC's because of hardware failures. When my iPod went into the weeds, I took it in, they gave me a new one. Try that with a home built PC. Currently I have 5 Macs in my studio. All are chugging away on projects. Real money projects. There is one PC. Guess what it does… Play GAMES!

Yeah there's alot of hype around Apple's new product announcements, but it's well deserved. Not because they're introducing anything new (its the same technology available to others), but because they're introducing something that actually works, looks good, and will last for a long long time.

I recently got a WM 6 Samsung Blackjack II. Tidy little device, but have you ever tried to surf the web in WM 6? I'd rather shove hot fireplace pokers in my eyes. The live demos at the Apple store on the iPhone are much better. Although my primary motivation in the Blackjack was the keyboard, followed by price and 3G. Movies look horrible on it and audio is like a 1980 Chevette standard AM radio. It does what I want, though, so I'm mostly satisfied with it. I don't need a multimedia device as a phone. If I did, I would have waited for the next iPhone. There's a point there if someone is willing to think about it.

Dell/ACER/Gateway produce, well, junk. They're still around (mostly through buyouts and mergers). They sell alot of junk. Apple produces elegant products. It doesn't sell as much. Hasn't for decades, but it's still around. Their quality and reliability is first rate. It will be for a long long time. Like Microsoft will be around for a long long time. Dell probably will be too. Mostly because of the lowest common denominator factor.

Reality check! It's not how much something costs or market share. It's about appeal and adaptability. It works on both ends of the price/quality spectrum. Be careful on the low end though as your profit margins are razor thin. (Ask IBM and Gateway)

BTW, I also work in an IT industry administrating both Macs and PCs. We do have XServes in our enterprise, right next to our Dell servers. I've also purchased complete systems PCs and built my own. I've re-built Macs from the ground up and have dealt with their clones. I'm a Microsoft Certified Professional, a multimedia producer, and a real IT admin. I choose the right tool for the job. If it's not games, it's not a PC.

(P.S. I live in the midwest and those in the know pay well for their multimedia producers. I hate to think of what your corporate website looks like at minimum wage)

When accounting for year over year growth for Acer, you need to add the combined results of both merged companies (including Gateway) to present the data accurately, not use a distorted number of 294% growth. This is hidden in the second chart where Acer's actual merged growth is only 0.5%.

I saw similar inaccurate reporting during the HP/Compaq merger, when some uninformed journalists tried to distort the data to make it appear that HP was loosing most of its market share to Dell. In fact, HP came out ahead of Dell when complete data was presented for the merged companies in the following years.

The fact that Apple is now ranked #4 US shows that they continue to play an important but limited role in the industry.

Actually, the most newsworthy point of this article is that the new Acer (combined with Gateway) has displaced Lenovo (formerly IBM) to become one of the top 3 US PC vendors. What ever happened to Lenovo? Lenovo is now outranked by even Apple & Toshiba.

With Lenovo's shrinking presence in the market, we are left with only two vendors with double-digit shipments & market share: Dell & HP. So the real market share fight is still between these two companies. And the company to watch is Acer, to see if they can get into the double-digit space that was once held by Lenovo.

ex ped: It does seem a paradox. I think the answer is that the 30% growth was year to year while the slight drop in market share IDC and Gartner reported was quarter to quarter — in a quarter when Apple's competitors were heavily discounting their product to pump up Christmas sales.

Evian, the bottled water brand which spells Naive when spelled backwards, goes for the same crowd of gullible snobs, and probably does equally well.

As PT Barnum said, a sucker is born every minute…

Apple isn't superior, but it's extreme premium cost leads the ill-informed to believe it is. This poor logic is epitomized thusly: "It costs more, so it must be better, plus they say they're better, so it must be true."

Actually Sony was a bad example – they are using the same design-oriented strategy as Apple but do it in the Windows world.