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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As I expected, as soon as I disposed of the myth that Macs were more expensive than comparably-quipped PCs, a few readers tried to dispute my arguments. In the end, however, their claims were limited to saying that the PC was generally cheaper, so long as some of the features that were standard issue on the Macs were eliminated.

Of course, that changes the nature of beast, so to speak. Besides, I realize that you can buy a PC for less than $300, whereas the cheapest Mac mini is $599. But Apple isn’t playing in that sandbox. It’s a hotly competitive arena, and the companies who do produce the cheapest models aren’t making a whole lot of money on them.

Besides, they might lack the features you take for granted on today’s Macs, such as wireless networking, digital audio input and output, gigabit Ethernet. You want to add those features, you pay extra, and even if you have a free peripheral slot or two, they’ll fill up real fast with just the essentials. What do you do when you run out of expansion room, and there’s no USB-based alternative?

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Years ago, when I first arrived in Arizona, I visited the Scottsdale school district, which, at the time, was a showpiece for Mac technology. It has since gone to Windows, but that’s another story replete with the usual amount of political byplay. In the end, they were hoodwinked into thinking that kids should be using the operating system they would be using when they were adults, forgetting that you’re supposed to use a computer to run applications, and the operating system shouldn’t get in the way.

Anyway, even the school districts in reasonably affluent neighborhoods are strapped for cash these days, although I’m not sure about Beverly Hills High. No doubt Dell and other PC makers have made deals largely on price and the promise of cheap replacements if a computer fails. Into this environment, what does Apple have to offer? Well, the iBook has been popular with many districts, and I’m sure you’ve heard about some of the deals involving thousands of computers.

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Call me an optimist, but I think Apple has done an excellent job transitioning its notebook computers to Intel processors. Yes, I know some of you readers remain upset that the earliest production runs of the MacBook Pro weren’t quite as reliable as you hoped. But all in all, Apple has done what some might regard as a near-impossible feat, which is to move most Macs to a totally new processor architecture within months, way ahead of what many expected when the maneuver was first announced nearly a year ago.

People who somehow expected that Apple would shave prices in the process or totally redesign their computers will be sadly disappointed. Most models look very much like the ones they replaced, although the MacBook seems to have gotten more attention from the design point. I just wonder how many will want to pay a $200 premium to get black, even though it only offers a drive with an extra 20GB storage space.

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