Miss Helfinger
The man says:
First off, Mac has changed a lot over the years. The vast majority of incompatibility of PC and Mac is no longer existent.
Second, Mac prices have continued to fall. There are entry level prices for mac around 500, similar to your Dell PC, with just as good, if not greater capability - including the fact that you're not paying for an operating system trying to work with an uncountable number of hardware combinations.
Third, yes, there is no problem with PCs, it's more a problem with Microsoft Operating Systems than the hardware. UBUNTU, Linux, are great alternatives for free operating systems. Did you know that Linux is built upon Unix? Unix has been widely known as one of the most stable operating systems and is used by all of the most intensive and necessary computer systems for decades. That being said, Mac OSX is built upon a native Unix shell. This makes OSX an incredibly robust, secure and reliable operating system.
This can be further emphasized in that purchasing Apple Hardware, running OSX has been tried and tested to work with the operating system. Plug and Play - eat your heart out!
EDIT: IN ADDITION:
Fourth point: For the past several years, Mac Hardware has been featuring Intel processors. This change in hardware has allowed software virtualization applications to become regularly used. Being a developer, I have the need to run windows XP frequently to write windows applications. I have been able to do this by launching a virtual machine running windows XP right within OSX environment. This runs fairly well for most use but to sweeten the deal, OSX 10.5 Leopard includes an application called 'Bootcamp'. Bootcamp is free and comes with Leopard. It allows you to partition your current hard drive and install a copy of windows on the other partition. With a simple restart of your Mac you can be running full-Windows at native hardware speeds. The best of both worlds CAN be had.
In conclusion: I will give windows it's due prop for dominating the computer operating system market for many years and allowing a multitude of hardware combinations to find a common operating system environment. However, doesn't it make more sense to use an operating system that is built FOR AND BY the people that create the hardware?
Point and score!!!!!!!!!!