Quote Originally Posted by Lord Orwell
And who HAS had pleasant experiences with a hardware manufacturer? Apple does more than make the OS. They make the hardware. I could tell you story after story about HP.
I may be easy to please, but I have generally been quite happy with most of the hardware companies I have dealt with over the years. On the other hand, I have always stayed away from HP and Gateway, so I am not making choices at random (though it sometimes feels that way).

Their hardware may be overpriced on a simply functional standpoint, but there's a lot to be said for aesthetics.
Yes, in the case of Apple, you can also say: YUCK!! I have yet to see anything out of that company that was good looking. A guy who was working for me had pretty much every toy they put out. For most of it you could just say "White is the new beige." Then he bought a really good desktop system, and it looked totally pretentious. Not to say that you couldn't do just as badly in the PC market, as there are plenty of goofy cases out there. I guess when it comes to taste, there are lots of varieties.

In any case, you in fact CAN build your own mac from the ground up (as long as you use intel) although it's against Apple's user agreement to install OS10 on hardware other than apple's. I've managed to get os10 to boot on an amd system (but not fully function) but lots of people run it on intel. look up "hackintosh".
I didn't know that.