InsanelyGreatMac has an excellent article outlining another point in the ongoing battle of which is better: PC or Mac? The article gives the examples of computer companies such as Sony, which install "crapware" (or demo versions of software that you have to manual uninstall) on new machines. At the time of the IGM article, Sony was charging $150 to get your machine free of unwanted software -- a $50 fee for not installing the extras, and $100 for an upgrade to Microsoft Vista Business Edition (whoa, say that 5 times fast). Wired has since reported that said Sony has removed the $50 "Fresh Start" fee, making one only pay $100 to upgrade to Vista Business. IGM also made the point that Mac users may pay a premium, i.e.the "Apple tax", to get a better, crapware free product.
Roughly Drafted has a nice, long analysis
The iPod is the 21st century Walkman and it seems that Sony isn't content to let Apple potentially dominant the internet communication market with the 
TDM-IP1
Macworld 
I hereby declare Sony to have had the worst 2006 year of any company. As if major PS3 shortages and being blamed for everyone's 
Poor Sony, they just can't seem to win lately. At least they have 
It's not uncommon for computer manufacturers to swap and switch out various components for similar or near-identical parts during a production run, and Apple has been known to partake in this practice in the past. That being said, occasionally a manufacturer will use a part which has a slightly higher build quality or performance than its counterpart in other machines and simply throttle down the performance of the superior part through firmware.
Product recalls are certainly nothing new to the tech industry, but two significant PC players (Dell and Apple) having to recall a collective 5.9 million batteries has to sting just a little for Sony. Macworld is 
