MS vs. Mac

I stopped doing the editorial/opinion piece type post awhile ago, but Steve has forced me to post this one. Apologies to any offended and, no, I will not responde to the usual flame wars that follow any mention of this topic.

With that said...

The argument that a Mac costs more than a MS PC is a tiring one. It's complete BS and smacks of a marketing playbook that should have been thrown out in the 90's.

If you load up equitable hardware with similar software, they cost about the same, thanks to the prices you'll pay for Office (though MS still hasn't come up with a decent competitor to Keynote), a decent media editor, and upgrading within the confusing array of MS OS versions to make it equitable.

Don't get me wrong, MS is a decent OS. To tell the truth, if I owned either type of laptop (I'm without one at the moment), I'd quadruple boot the sucker as I also use SunOS and Linux in my work. This will probably mean that my next purchase is an Apple because you can't boot into OSX on a non-Mac machine.

My problem is that Mr. Ballmer's statements are exactly what's annoyed me about the company for years: it's the marketing department in action. I want the tools, not the hype. Would someone ask Mr. Ballmer to please sit down and shut up?