People who own PCs and Macs, the category I fall into, got 15% of the vote, which was also a little higher than I expected. Make of this what you will, but the difference between the poll compared to our OS tracking graphic pictured here should indicate why we wanted to focus on your own hardware—not the computer you use at work. At any rate, the race is really still too close to call. You have time to cast your vote and help tip the scales in your favor.

Before you answer the poll, keep this in mind: work machines don't count. Presumably, you made a personal choice between a Mac or a PC for your private computer—and that is the one we want to know about.

The 2% figure is extrapolated from NPD's less direct assessment:

[A]pproximately 12 percent of all U.S. computer owning households own an Apple computer, up from 9 percent in 2008. While Apple ownership is growing, those households are decidedly in favor of mixed system environments. Of those 12 percent, nearly 85 percent also own a Windows-based PC.

At first glance, these stats almost seem wrong, but when you start think about it, they make sense: The survey polled "households," which, on account of grandma's Compaq or your roommate's gaming PC, clobbers the exclusivity figure. (I live in what any reasonable person would call a "Mac household"—three people who use Macs almost exclusively—but that little Acer netbook sitting on the table means we're not.)

Plus, PCs are cheap and they linger, and Macs, being pricier, tend to find their way into richer households, where more than one computer is almost a given. That, combined the fact that most Macs sold are laptops, and therefore a little more likely to be a supplemental computer, makes the 2% figure look a little less crazy, but still, 2%? Fanboys, you're slacking. [NPD via Macrumors]

Needless to say, the execution on this concept chessboard leaves something to be desired, but the idea has potential. I can see a whole series of Mac vs PC board games springing from this. So, who killed Mac with the wrench in the library? (Psst...it's probably PC.) [Coroflot via Waylou via Craziest Gadgets via SlipperyBrick]

Any regrets? Why?

It's been pretty good. Here's a quick rundown of some of my experiences.

• Expose and Spaces are great for someone who usually has over a dozen windows and programs open at once. Having Photoshop isolated to its own space to reduce clutter is great, and being able to swipe down and see everything at once is also really nice. One issue I've run into, however, is that spaces makes dragging and dropping across programs harder. Sure, you can drag down to the icon, but if I want to drag album artwork from Firefox into the proper section of iTunes rather than importing the image, I can't do it across spaces. Not a huge deal, however.

• I really like the multitouch trackpad...most of the time. It's great for using expose and for right-clicking with two fingers, but it also often misfires, especially in programs like Photoshop. Photoshop thinks I want to rotate the image every damned time I put more than one finger on the trackpad. This gets very annoying.

• Some functions and options are just buried way too deep. For example, whenever I plug my iPhone in, iPhoto opens. I in no way want this to happen. In order to turn this off, I had to Google it and get instructions from a message board. It involved fiddling with the Image Capture app, which is not really that intuitive. How would a non-expert figure this out?

• One of my favorite programs is Connect 360, which serves media to my Xbox 360 from my MBP. It's actually amazingly ironic that this works so much better on a Mac, seeing that Microsoft makes the Xbox 360. But I tried multiple times to do this on my PC, and it always involved downloading new versions of Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player, getting codes from my Xbox and putting them into my computer and multiple restarts. Even then, it never worked. For $20 I bought Connect 360 and it was working in 3 minutes. Microsoft, what the hell are you doing that this is the case?

• Growl is a nice little notification service that lets programs deliver pop-up messages in a way that's unified across the system. It's great for stuff like the Gmail notifier, but a lot of apps abuse this thing. No, Last.fm, I don't want a pop-up notification every time a new song starts. Annoyingly enough, you can't control these notifications inside the preferences of the apps that use it. Instead, you need to go to System Preferences and go to Growl's pane. Not a huge annoyance, but I had to search around through all of Last.fm's menus before trying a different approach. Not too intuitive.

• Every single Mac app costs money. Where's the freeware on Macs? On the PC, I used Texter to create macros for things I type a lot, which is free. On the Mac, there's TextExpander, and it's $30. There are loads of free FTP clients for the PC. On Mac, you use Transmit, and it's $30. Tweetie is a nice enough Twitter client, but it sure isn't $15 worth of nice. TextMate is a great, robust text editor, but no text editor is worth $54.

Paying $30 for one app that provides a great value is fine, but paying $30 each for 10 basic apps that aren't all that important on their own adds up pretty fast.

Overall, the learning curve on the switch was really gentle. I feel like I've figured out most of the important stuff, and I've been enjoying my experience for the most part. But the fact remains that this was a damned expensive computer. MacBook Pros start at a solid $2,000. Is it worth it in this recession?

I'd say that if you are happy with your PC and don't have any serious issues, no. There's no real reason to justify the switch and the difference in price. But if you're sick of your PC, are curious or just feel like switching things up, I haven't run across any dealbreakers that would make a former Windows user run for the hills. It's a slick machine that's very stable and has lots of nice perks, but switching isn't going to change anybody's life all that much.

According to CNBC's Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, PCs need the following things to "perform as well as a Mac": $50 a year for anti-virus software, $104 multimedia software, $100 music software, $140 "Photoshop—you get that with Apple" and $129 for a Geek Squad visit. Over $600 worth of extra stuff. Oh, and Macs get 4x the battery life, have faster processors and a higher resolution screen.

Um. What? Last time I checked, you can get pretty decent antivirus software for free, my MacBook Pro didn't come with Photoshop, and iTunes was free on OS X and Windows. For multimedia, you've got Windows Media Center, which is also pretty free. And Picasa—hey, it's free too—isn't a bad alternative to iPhoto. Okay, you might have to spend money on video editing software, since MovieMaker ain't so hot. But you know what? A lot of the stuff MobileMe charges you $100 a year to get, Windows Live provides for free, like SkyDrive's 25GB of storage. I would also like to meet this mythical Mac with an all-day battery, since we sure haven't seen it.

Look, there are some valid reasons to pick a Mac over a PC, just like there are valid reasons to pick a PC over a Mac. But you shouldn't smear blatant horseshit all over them, especially when it's already confusing enough for regular people, your audience, Mr. CNBC Silicon Valley Bureau Chief.

Update: No wonder the figures Goldman tosses out look so familiar. Reader Rob points out they're pulled straight out of this piece by Arik Hesseldahl in BusinessWeek. Did I just miss the credit to BusinessWeek or Hesseldahl? [CNBC - Thanks Jason and Rob!]

Here's a sample of the nearly two full pages of micro-font dickitude in the ad:

To remove unneeded bloatware first open uninstaller, select applications to remove, and uninstall. To remove optional components, click start, go to all programs and open control panel, select remove components, select components you want to remove, select next, when done, select finish. Once initial prep is complete, PCs may then be easy to use under certain controlled conditions and when properly maintained. In order for PCs to achieve optimal performance on a regular basis and for long periods of time, routine maintenance should include (but is not limited to) the following: download and install updated anti-virus software, run anti-virus software, check for system updates, clean out registry, defragment hard drive, free up disk space, remove temporary Internet files, empty the recycle bin, remove unnecessary programs, run error check utility and fix file system errors.

Ready the salvos, the Mac vs. PC war just got hot again and it's only going to get steamier. [MacJournals via Macworld]

It makes sense that Microsoft is going for a more conceptual ad here, rather than tick off a list of everything that people should perceive Vista is good at (they already do that on the page the ad points to). I can think of a lot of other future installments, like "At one point, everyone thought witches walked among us" or "At one point, people thought they could turn lead into gold," or "At one point, people thought that it was a good idea to shit into ditches alongside the city streets." The campaign basically writes itself—why don't you guys give is a whirl. [ZDNet via CrunchGear]

Don't believe everything you read, especially when it's coming from Cupertino. [PC World (MacBook Pro), and PC World (Eurocom D900C Phantom-X), via Joe's Blog]

According to IDC, Apple's market share is considerably higher than reported by Piper Jaffray, reaching 6.3% at the end of the third quarter of 2007. That's compared with a 5.7% market share at the end of the same quarter last year, a 15.9% gain. Still, that's a tiny sliver of Dell's 28% market share and HP's market share of 24.3%. Either way you slice it, even though the echo chamber of the blogosphere might make it seem like Apple is dominating, Macs are still a relatively minor player when it comes to market share. [Apple Insider and Notebook Review]

Now that all seven parts of the Gates vs. Jobs videos are available, we thought we'd give you easy one-stop access to them all right here. Above is a highlight reel of the festivities, and after the jump, starting with the first video, watch all seven of the excerpts of Gates and Jobs going at it in the All Things D (otherwise known as D5) conference. Plus, don't miss our own first-hand impressions of the event as we live blogged it.

VIDEO: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates [D | All Things Digital.]

They're using the same music from the US spots, but there's a different attitude with these Brits. Still, same idea—the PC guy is a bit overweight, has a big nose and is just not nearly the hepcat the Mac dude is. Anyway, they just sound so, uh, polite compared with us crude Americans.

They also make a good point: Office plays well on Macs. In fact, Microsoft makes tons of money selling Mac software, and last year agreed to continue developing Office for Mac OS X for five more years. – Charlie White

A message to those PR people, engineers, product managers, VPs and CEOs at Dell, HP, Sony, Lenovo, and our other favorite PC makers: Don't let the people in charge of putting these demos on your machines ruin your computers. Please, fight back, for our sake, and for the sake of your reputations.–Brian Lam

Mac vs PC [Apple via Hickey@Crunchgear]

Novell decided to jump on the Mac vs. PC parody bandwagon, with the zillionth imitation of those spots. But now they bring Linux into the equation, represented by an attractive young lady. While she is quite eye-catching, we would like to have seen a hotter babe to go along with the indescribable beauty of Ubuntu, or the dark mystery of its command line.

Anyway, it's about time somebody stuck up for a superior operating system, rather than those two mainstream OSes of the unwashed masses getting all the limelight. – Charlie White

According to Novell ads, Linux is a cute girl who needs a haircut [Crave]

Unreleased Mac vs. PC ad [via Techeblog]