sacrifices? Thats a bit of a strong word, maybe priorities and trade offs. If your willing to trade bleeding edge tech for stability, or at least the ability to know who to blame when something fails. Windows = is it a driver, a hardware component vs. another component, the OS, etc... not a bad thing, just something to be mindful of. Mac = doesn't work, must be the OS, I know off the bat who is at fault, it's usually hardware failings instead of drivers/OS issues though. (melted magsafe adapter, slot loading disc player destroying my discs) I'm don't mind the bashing so much, I'm a fanboy of neither and use a little of everything to give it a try, Linux Studio, FreeBSD, Mac, Vista, 7 Beta (I really like), Just give a solid reason, like audio equipment why it's good/not so good. Besides it sucks, it just works, etc... Seems to be the two staple arguments for the fanboys in both major camps. Since this is a forum of headphones, shouldn't the focus be on what set up gets a cleaner signal? (optical out, no need for ASIO, vs. amount of internal soundcards and devices) It's seriously making me look at my gaming set up for maybe a macbook and more head-fi gear...at the moment I have a MBP (santa rosa) the biggest complaint I have is it has been harder to get good info on system specs versus PC/Windows based hardware. i.e. Looking up how much Ram my laptop could run. I think at the time apple only offered 2GB, however it will read 4GB, it can only utilize 3GB. After working at a computer store, I began to resent "mac heads" because of this. Nobody had a straight answer, I'll even say, maybe I didn't know where to look. I'm going to switch completely so I can consolidate all my stuff onto a single platform. (which one?) I sure have rambled enough, I didn't even say anything, so in closing, Bumble Bee Tuna!