No, that would be an urban legend. Electric meters don't care about power factor, they measure real power. Also, keep in mind that modern electronic meters have a lot of features to detect tampering. So if you try to play games with the meter, the utility will know about it.

The real problem with CFLs is waveform distortion. They use rectifiers, which draw power at the peak of the cycle. This creates nonlinear currents, which cannot be fixed simply by adding inductors. If the lamps had a purely capacitive power factor, the utilities would love them, since that would help balance out the loads from various motors (which are very inductive). Also, this problem isn't unique to CFLs. Light dimmers cause exactly the same problem with incandescents, too.

That's pretty stupid. Dimming an incandescent lamp dramatically reduces its efficiency (you get something like 50% of the light at 80% of the power). Sure, you are saving 10 cents a year on bulbs, but you are probably wasting $5 a year on electricity. Put in a 60W lamp and run it at 100% you will get more light with less power. Or put in a 15W CFL and save a lot more money.

Also, for most lamps in the house the payback period is something like 2 months. One 100W lamp that's on for 6 hours a day uses $22 of electricity a year (assuming 10 cents/kWh). So even if you spend $5 a lamp, they pay for themselves fairly quickly.

A power factor of 0.5 does NOT mean that you are using twice the power. It means that you are drawing twice the current (out of phase with the voltage). That can be a problem because of transmission losses. However, it's still far better than using an incandescent lamp, which uses 4 times more power than a CFL.

Wow, you are truly retarded. OK, let me explain it in simple terms for retarded children like yourself. The Dell is made from injection-molded plastic and cheap components. The base price is $600 for that model. It is designed for consumers who will mostly keep it at home and won't use it very much. If you subject it to heavy use (traveling, using it as a primary machine), it will break very quickly. The Macbook Pro is designed for professional use. You can use it 10 hours a day, travel with it, and expect it to last at least 3 years.

Now you're not even being serious anymore.

Really? The part that you use 99% of the time is not important? You are an idiot.

Fine, for the sake of argument, I'll say that the Mac is better than Dell. The Mac still costs more, which is my frickin' point.

So a better computer costs more. Makes sense to me. What are you whining about?

I don't know what sort of company you work for, but in most places nobody bothers repairing PCs. What's the point of repairing a $500 computer when staff time costs $50-100 an hour, parts are not readily available, and it's likely to break again? It's much cheaper to junk it and replace it with a spare (or send it in for warranty). If it's an iMac, you could probably just send the whole thing to Apple and have them repair it under warranty. Considering the abysmal reliability of most Dell boxes, you would probably reduce the need for service by an order of magnitude.

But I can't afford even a Netbook right now.

Sounds like you need an Xbox 360. If you want a gaming machine, buy a gaming machine. They are like $150 these days, and they look amazing hooked up to a 1080p TV. It's pretty stupid buying an expensive computer just to play games.

Who the hell actually expands and upgrades their PCs these days, though? This isn't 1997, you can't just buy a computer and just replace the motherboard and CPU every 2 years. Unless you play a lot of video games (in which case Macs are not really an option), I do not see why you would need to upgrade a machine if it had decent specs when you bought it. It's a pain to even add RAM these days, since by the time you get around to it, the type required will already be obsolete and expensive. And really, just about everything you might need to add is available as a USB device.

Why the hell would you want a higher resolution on a 15" laptop? 1440x900 is about the highest resolution that's practical on a 15" display. Apple does have 1920x1200 on the 17" model.

Also, you do know the mouse is configurable? A two-finger tap does a right click. On Linux, 3 fingers do a middle click (although the Linux touchpad driver was written by monkeys and works extremely poorly with a multitouch touchpad).

And hey, enjoy the fast CPU (and ensuing infertility and 35-minute battery life).

Well, we are comparing a high-quality, professional-grade laptop with a cheap low-end Dell that's designed for college students. The Macbook Pro is designed for professionals -- people who use it to do their job. People who use a laptop to do their job generally don't care about the price all that much. $850 over 3 years comes out to 77 cents a day. If you actually use the laptop to do your job, $850 is a rounding error. The laptop will pay for itself the first time it saves you a few hours dealing with hardware and software problems (that the Dell will inevitably develop).

Besides, since when are processor/memory specs relevant for a laptop? I'd say quality, weight, reliability, and vendor support are far more important than gigahertz. Guess where Apple wins? Let's see:
- solid aluminum case
- backlit keyboard
- magsafe connector
- magnetic screen latch
- ambient light sensor
- great keyboard
- superior warranty service
- superior operating system

So yeah, feel free to spend $1900 on a laptop that's worth about $800. There's a reason Macbooks cost more.

Well, you used to be able to get a Yugo for $4000. It doesn't mean it was a good value. But yes, if you don't care about performance and quality, you can find slightly cheaper products. Another thing to consider is that Mac laptops hold their value extremely well, while $700 PC laptops tend to be worth $200 after about a year. But really, you can get a refurbished Macbook for $850, and it's a far better value than any Windows laptop for $700.

OK, I'll bite. I actually got a Sansa c250 for $15 on clearance somewhere. Sure, the features sound great on paper, but it's pretty much the biggest piece of shit I've ever used. After using it, I can definitely understand how Apple has 75% of the MP3 player market. Let's see:
- the user interface is awful. A retarded 5-year-old could design a better interface. It's slow, buggy, confusing, featureless, and incredibly ugly. Buttons will randomly get pushed in your pocket, causing bad things to happen.
- the hardware sucks. It's large, chintzy, and really cheap-feeling.
- you pretty much have to look at the display to use it. Great if you are sitting at a desk. Not so great if you are say, running, or snowboarding, or whatever.
- the firmware sucks. The battery indicator doesn't work properly. The MP3 decoding sucks. ID3 tags do not get properly displayed. It takes 5 minutes to rebuild the database every time you plug it in the USB port to charge.
- the much-hyped FM tuner barely has any reception. If you walk around the room, you'll probably lose reception a few times.

Even with all of the iPod shuffle's shortcomings, there just isn't a price point at which the Sansa wins. I pretty much just threw the thing in the trash after playing with it for a couple of hours. If you paid the original price for it, you got seriously ripped off.

Yeah, they really care about Rockbox. That's why they encrypted the firmware. Right. It has nothing to do with people trying to crack Fairplay, pirate iPhone applications, and hack/clone/jailbreak the iPhone. Seriously, dude. There are about a million reasons why Apple would want to protect its products from hacking, and I seriously doubt Rockbox is anywhere on that list. Seriously, the DIY Altoids-can MP3 players are more of a competitive threat to apple than Rockbox.

The EFF needs to lay off this crap if it wants to retain credibility. This is rather silly. If you want to make iPod-compatible accessories, you can either license the relevant information or buy the chips from Apple, or you can reverse engineer it. If you reverse engineer it, you could potentially get sued due to patent violations. I have no idea how they think the DMCA comes into the picture -- I am thinking they just put it there as a red herring.

Besides, it's not like Apple is the only company making MP3 players. If you don't like their policies, buy another MP3 player, or make your own. I'm not sure when the EFF became the whiny Ralph Nader-style consumer watchdog, but I'm sure most consumers are quite capable of assessing whether or not they like a given product.

Hahhahaha, seriously. Rockbox is the biggest piece of shit I've ever used. Let's see, tons of useless, buggy, poorly-implemented features, a horrible UI, and poor hardware support. Who the hell needs FLAC support on a portable device, anyway? It's good for killing battery life and disk space, and that's about it. Between the terrible UI, countless bugs, and "features" such as reduced battery life, you'd have to be out of your mind to use that POS. I understand how it came about (replacement FW for horrible Archos players), but why would you put it on an iPod?

Also, I've never had any problems with any of my iPods. When I tried out rockbox, it would hang whenever I tried to generate the database. I promptly wiped it. Maybe the developers should think about fixing some of the bugs before they add more useless crap to the features list.

Um, are you retarded?