And then there’s Turkish electronics and appliance manufacturer Vesta. Here at IFA, they’re showing a notebook that A) has a “Yoda” label (though no imagery of the little guy–it may have nothing to do with Mr. Lucas’s creation) and B) is covered in cow spots:

Maybe this makes sense if you’re Turkish…

Apple, of course, makes no typical desktop PCs for consumers; we’re now in the second decade of the all-in-one iMac. The unified-monitor-and-CPU form factor never conquered the Windows world, but several major manufacturers offer units that combine that design’s space-saving virtues with a splash of Apple-like flair. What say we compare the current 20-inch iMac to some Windows-based iMacalikes?

Once again, I’ll begin with a mini-FAQ, cribbing from my earlier stories:

Q. How did you decide what Windows all-in-ones to include in this comparison?

A. Well, there aren’t all that many out there to choose from, so it wasn’t that hard. I found ones from three companies I’ve included in earlier installments in this series–Dell, Gateway, and Sony. The Gateway comes in only one configuration, as far as I can tell. The Dell is extremely configurable, and the Sony comes in several versions; in both cases, I chose a standard configuration that was at least in the same ballpark as Apple’s midrange 20-inch iMac in terms of features and price.

Q. Are the Windows machines just embarrassing, shameless iMac ripoffs, like eMachines’ old eOne?

A. I think it’s safe to say that they all draw some inspiration from the iMac line, and hope to steal some of its business. But they’ve got their own personalities, and even have clever features the iMac likes. (I like the way the Gateway puts some of the ports on the power brick.) Two of them aim to be combo PC-TVs, a concept that doesn’t exist in the Apple world.

Q. The very cheapest iMacs are twelve hundred bucks–you can buy Windows desktops for way, way less than that–even once you’ve factored in the price of the monitor–and some of them have better specs. You pay a lot for that all-in-one design, my friend.

A. Very true, and I may compare an iMac to garden-variety Windows desktops at some point. In this story, though, I’m sticking to all-in-ones, none of which are dirt-cheap, and none of which have radically better overall specs than the iMac.

Q. How do you factor in the obvious superiority of the Mac platform? (Or, if you prefer, its obvious inferiority.)

A. I don’t! For this series, I tried to make my research err on the side of things that are easy to measure, like hard-drive size and the availability or unavailability of a particular feature. Folks who are commenting on my comparisons are doing a great job of going beyond that to discuss the platforms in general, and I plan to do so myself eventually.

Q. Will you tell me which of the systems is best?

A. Nope–I’m just trying to determine whether the midrange iMac looks pricey or reasonable when compared to all-in-one Windows PCs that are at least sort of similar.

Q. Please tell me your conclusions now–I’ve got a bus to catch in a few minutes.

A. Gladly–the iMac isn’t cheap, but it’s an okay deal overall.  On the downside, it doesn’t come with a TV tuner (no Mac does) and the keyboard and mouse are wired in the configuration I chose. But in terms of clockspeed, it’s got the fastest CPU of the machines I looked at, and is well specced in other areas. Bottom line: I don’t think anyone who prefers a Mac and isn’t interested in a Windows machine that’s not an all-in-one should sweat over the iMac’s price.

Q. For the love of Pete, will you please cut to the chase?

A. Sure, as soon as you click on to the next page…

I also managed to stir up lots of controversy, in the form of dozens of comments and discussion elsewhere on the Web. So as promised, I’m back with another round of price comparisons, and based in part on comments to my original post by a reader named Michael, I’ve decided to stick with the MacBook and compare it to Windows laptops that happen to be on sale at Best Buy at the moment.

Once again, I’ll begin with a mini-FAQ:

Q. How did you decide what Windows laptops to include in this comparison?

A. I looked for ones that are currently on sale at Best Buy, then limited the options to ones that were in-stock at BestBuy.com, to avoid any deals that were irresistible but unavailable. I then selected machines from Gateway, HP, and Sony that were as close to the base MacBook as possible. (Best Buy does sell Dells, too, but the only similar one was out of stock.) Since Best Buy doesn’t stock machines of all sorts and I couldn’t do custom configurations, the Windows boxes weren’t as close to the MacBook as in my first comparison–for instance, they all had larger screens, and none of them had Bluetooth.

Q. How do you factor in the obvious superiority of the Mac platform? (Or, if you prefer, its obvious inferiority.)

A. I don’t! Not in this story, anyhow. Ask just about anyone who likes Macs what they like best, and OS X will be the first thing they mention. But that’s ultimately subjective, and I tried to make my research err on the side of things that are easy to measure, like hard-drive size and the availability or unavailability of a particular feature.

Q. Can I find the Windows laptops even cheaper somwhere other than Best Buy?

A. Um, maybe, but I believe that these models are designed specifically for sale at Best Buy. Very similar models with slightly different names and slightly different configurations are probably available elsewhere. All of which makes precision comparison shopping maddeningly difficult.

Q. Will you tell me which of the systems is best?

A. Nope–this isn’t a review. I’m just trying to determine whether the cheapest MacBook looks pricey or reasonable when compared to low-cost Windows notebooks that are at least vaguely similar.

Q. Will you tell me your conclusions now so I don’t have to read any further?

A. Oh, okay–unlike the custom-configured Windows laptops in my first comparison, these Best Buy sale machines are all a lot cheaper than the basic MacBook, with more RAM, bigger hard drives, and larger screens.

Q. Why do you spend so much time asking yourself questions and then answering them? Is it some sort of nervous tic?

A. Sorry about that. Let’s get on with the show, starting with more details on the computers I compared.

There was a time when it looked like most PCs might end up being sold direct. And at its best, it was and is a wonderful way to buy a computer. Now only Dell remains as a major manufacturer focused on the direct market, and it’s dabbling in retail itself and generally no longer a shining example of the virtues of buying direct.

Today’s news is no shocker, since Acer not only doesn’t sell direct but has thrived in recent years by actively spurning direct sales in order not to compete with the retail outfits that sell its PCs. Only a really schizophrenic company could have done business both the new Acer way and the old Gateway way.

A lot of us whose memories of PCs go back to the 1980s probably retain some residiual fondness for Gateway–the plucky, quirky upstart founded as Gateway 2000 by Ted Waitt in in Sioux City, Iowa in 1985, with the wacky, cow-centric marketing. That company disappeared a long time before Acer bought it–it was certainly gone by the time it launched an ill-fated attempt to reinvent itself as a consumer-elecronics company and then ended up acquiring eMachines, and eMachines’ business strategy. in 2004. But the warm fuzzies for the Gateway name have helped sustain it, even though the company in its current form has almost nothing in common with its original incarnation except the word “Gateway” in its name.

Okay, the cow spots remain, too…