So I was hanging out chatting with David, a fellow New Yorker who owns the nearby UPS Store, about personal computers. He knows I use Macs, and I’m aware that he’s a Windows advocate. He started claiming, all over again, that his home PC cost a lot less than any comparable Mac. So, with few customers arriving to disturb our conversation, I took ahold of one of his transaction computers and ran the inevitable price comparison all over again.

He knows I recently acquired a spanking new Mac Pro, whereas he has a home-built PC filled to the gills to provide stellar gaming performance. Once again, I suggested the Mac Pro was a lot more affordable than the comparable PC box. He strongly disagreed, as expected, so I suggested we compare apples to apples (actually Apples and Dells) to see what facts we could unearth.

To begin with, he suggested I select Windows XP Professional from the PC order sheet — he dismissed Vista as readily as I did.

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Year after year, I’ve been battling the eternal falsehood that Macs cost more than similarly-priced Windows hardware. This ongoing war rages long and and hard, but at the end of the day, I believe I win the argument on the basis of a simple and supremely logical method of comparison: You have to match the features of the competing computers as closely as possible.

That, of course, raises the hackles of many of you, because you still feel Macs are somehow overpriced. Why? Well, because you would like to be able to buy a stripped version without some of the frills that you may not need, such as the Web cam on the iMac and notebooks, plus bundled AirPort and Bluetooth.

I suppose that makes a whole lot of sense for a business that buys thousands of boxes at a clip, and needs to keep the prices as low as possible. Therefore, they don’t want to equip those boxes with extra stuff they don’t need. But that’s not the sandbox Apple plays in, and they have indicated time and time again they aren’t going to change.

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You know it makes an awful lot of sense. When you are price shopping for a new car, you’ll check off the options list and see that both have similarly powerful six-cylinder engines, air conditioning, perhaps a navigation system, satellite radio and so on and so forth.

At the end of the process, you tally up the sticker price, or whatever the dealer gives you as his “final offer,” and see where you stand. I’m assuming here that we’re talking about two similar makes, such as a Honda Accord and a Toyota Camry, and you’re making the final decision on price alone.

But what if one dealer said he could save you a few hundred by giving you the four-cylinder version, that changes the basis for comparison, and it’s up to you to weigh slightly better fuel economy against additional power.

You cannot, however, say the two vehicles are comparably equipped.

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