"Actually, I stand by my original statement."
Stand by it if you wish.
Just don't stand too close to it. Once again, making an absolute statement like "there are no viruses" isn't accurate no matter what threat level or number of viruses that are out there.
It fosters a false sense of security based on a flawed premise, making the analogy between the basement .44 Glock faulty both on its face and in depth.
"In what way?"
The line of work I'm in is totally infested with the koolaide cult of the Mac, whose adulation and veneration make it seem as if Macs can do everything from balancing the Federal budget in 7 seconds to raising the dead a la Jesus Christ himself. At times it puts the Cult of Obama to shame.
Objectively, Macs and PCs perform the same functions to the same level of competency and do in a manner that the vast majority of computer users will find to be transparent across platforms.
It's in specific cases where the Mac can shine, to which I've already stipulated.
I, too, have taught numerous people to use both Macs and PCs, both specific applications and general uses, and my perception is that the learning curve difference is non existent.
I also have several old PCs. I still use my circa 1997-98/Windows 98 Gateway Celeron 366 meg. as a web surfer. It runs MS Office 2003 just fine, along with a variety of other programs. By your own definition, then, it's a perfectly capable machine.
Hell, I have a 20+ year old Sony 8088 with two 5.25" floppy drives and a 10 meg hard drive that still works like a trooper and still runs the games that I have for it. It even runs Word Perfect 4.2...
"Oh, and they don't come from the factory with the hard drives filled with junk."
OK, that can be looked at in one of two ways.
1. Macintosh values its customers and won't subject them to crap loading.
2. Macintosh is such a low volume nich market that no one wants to cobrand their crap loading on Macs.
"Oh, and the operating system doesn't take 30 gig of the hard drive or demand 1 1/2 gig of memory just to function smoothly."
OK. And for the vast majority of users, that sort of nuance is, at best, a non sequitor.
Don't get me wrong, Peet.
I recognize that Macs have some advantages, but for the average user, those advantages simply don't exist to any tangible degree, or at least not to a degree sufficient to result in their purchasing a Mac.
And, if Macs truly were the omni God that my koolaide clan coworkers claim them to be, imbued with mystical compupowers to overcome evil, wouldn't they have vanquished the dark forces of the Evil Master Bill Gates long ago?
Yeah, even I think Bill Gates is evil.