Excuse me, but you sir.  Yes you with the fancy white unibody laptop. Could you please come here. I have a secret I need to tell someone. Oh and you with the really thin silver one … could you step over here surreptitiously as well, please? I need to unload something that is bothering me.

I want a Mac! Shhh! Don’t tell my Windows friends or all those Mac people I’ve been making fun of for buying hardware that’s too expensive when compared to the same specs of a Windows machine. And please don’t tell that person at the Mac store who basically ruined my day when she claimed I submerged my iPod Touch in water when I know it has never gotten wet. I don’t want her to know this secret since I guaranteed I would never buy another Apple product again since my Touch died and they wouldn’t replace it under warranty because the moisture indicator was an every so light shade of pink instead of white.

The truth is, I have been looking at the Macbook Pros at my local Big Box store and wishing I could take one home. But I have a problem. I am trying to be a better steward of my money and while I am willing to spend on technology, I am not willing to buy a Mac for a few reasons.

1. Comparable Windows running hardware is just a LOT cheaper. I checked out HP’s site and looked for similar notebook PCs with the same specs as a Mac. I struggled to match them up equivalently. Almost all of their notebooks come with much more for about the same price or just a little more for much less. In once case I could get an HP for $300 less with more RAM and HDD space.

2. I have a ton of Windows software that would become obsolete. I know, I could run Parallels or Bootcamp. But why would I when I can run them natively in the system OS on my HP laptop or Lenovo desktop? And I don’t have to pay anymore money.

3. I really like my HP laptop with Windows 7. It came with Vista, but I upgraded with a copy I downloaded using my Technet subscription. It also has a very long battery that I can replace if it goes bad. I have two hard drives for it that I can swap out with just a few turns of the screwdriver to play with Ubuntu or something else.

But guess what. And this is not to be repeated to anyone. I still want one. But I will resist the temptation for now. And when I say now I mean today.

Well, back to work!