I guess I'm not as sensitive to price as I am intent on acquiring what I need to achieve my goals as best I can. I always saw a computer as a tool to communicate with people and as a tool for my photography, I was never interested in building one. I've bought Macs because I wanted the shortest path between me and doing the photography and writing that have been my primary goals since when I was 12 years old.
It's much the same as my approach to cameras: I bought a Pentax *ist DS in 2004 because I wanted an ultra wide lens that performed well and the Canon 10D I had at the time simply didn't work well with their available 14mm lens. The *ist DS and the DA14/2.8 worked beautifully... I own Leicas now because I want to use their lenses and I like their controls and sensors. The Leicas are expensive, but 'so what?'—I managed to afford them. If I couldn't, I'd use something else. My computers are not outrageously more expensive than any other system I might purchase of equivalent quality and performance. I owned a couple of DOS computers once upon a time, worked in UNIX and VMS in the 1980s as a member of a science research team, and even ran Windows 3.1 for a while as I needed to understand it for the job I had at that (different) time. I've found OS X works best for my needs this past decade and a half, I know it well, and I don't mind paying the premium for not having to learn all the other stuff needed to run Linux or Windows or whatever, and Apple's hardware is powerful/flexible/expandable enough for what I want to do. I'd pick other equipment if it wasn't. G -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.