vista32 black is what i meant by modded, it's fantastic. and i have windows updates permanently disabled. do not care about a security hole in windows media player enough to let it spontaneously start downloading patches mid-tracking session. i haven't had a viral/spyware problem in atLEAST several years. but FWIW, I also used to work at this place PC HealthStop (makin $10/hr

) about four years ago, and I was a technician, and probably 3-5 times a day I'd just have the task of cleaning up viral/spyware ridden PC's. I've also been A+ certified since I was 17, so driver maintenance/cleanliness is a non-issue.
That's not to say that on a bi-weekly basis i comb through my registry and that's the only way to keep a PC clean... on the contrary, I insist on ZERO mainentance and that's why it stays clean...heh. It makes sense in my head...and it works. Bad things don't happen to PC's until the user allows it to or until someone specifically and directly targets YOU (rarely the latter, unless you have lots of really nerdy enemies) and it's NOT that difficult to prevent bad things from getting in. If you're gonna use torrents, read all the comments on it before downloading. And i actually just remembered, I lied about having no spyware protection at all,
adblock plus plug-in for firefox is ALL YOU NEED and is EXTREMELY un-obtrusive and simply relies on a blacklist of known-malicious sites/ads. not a pop-up blocker or nonsense like that. 4chan gold, right there.
and, again, i still believe that the superiority of a Mac is due 100% only to its all-propietary hardware, which is ofcourse a HUGE plus, and enables alot of flexibility in programming where in PC land development needs to take place with a very general and open-ended hardware architecture in mind.
the VERY ROOT of the debate, is whether or not the propietary hardware (and general sexyness / hipness ) of a mac JUSTIFIES the large price bracket. For some people it DOES, and for others, it does not, and it comes down to the buyer needing to make an educated decision his or herself. and HOPEFULLY from now on, the buyer will be educated in ways other than starting a thread asking about it...anywhere. haha.
RULE OF THUMB: if you're not sure, or need to even ask in the first place, it's probably best to go mac. if you can afford it. if you can't, you won't be disappointed with windows either. as has been stated over and over, one isn't necessarily better than the other. believe us, if it were, you'd know, and this debate wouldn't exist.