Apple Inc (AAPL)

[langostino]

See, Blue, this is the problem

The average PC buyer with $1,500 in hand would have to work really, really hard to come up with a machine that "bad".

I just assembled a FAR superior machine on the Dell site for more than a couple hundred bucks less just moments ago. It's in the previous post. In fact, I overlooked another $100 off stackable coupon, so you can chop that price by another $100.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=11144006

AND, on the exact model you just assembled, you used a $100 coupon when there's a $450 coupon sitting right there for the trouble of a couple mouse clicks.
(328H?JD45VCD1W)

Which means that E1405 you configured is an $1,150 laptop, not a $1,500 laptop.

You can write off a couple mouse clicks worth $450-$750 as too big a pain-in-the-tuchus to bother including in your comparisons, but I don't known anyone who would consider it too much trouble to cash them in as a real-world customer.

At some point, then, it means your comparisons are accurate, given your own set of parameters, but fairly pointless in reflecting the real-world realities of the entire exercise.