I would definitely say, for a desktop, a hackintosh. I mean, by all means, if you have the money to spend, there's nothing like a real mac. But at the same time, going that route because people tell you osx86 is "unstable", requires you to "jump through hoops", involves constant "tinkering", is utterly retarded. Honestly, you need to try it yourself before you take someone else's word for it. My hackintosh experience was far from smooth, but the main reason being that it was my first time actually using OS X in depth to begin with. After initial confusion, troubleshooting, frustration, I know it well enough to where I need TWO third party kexts and nothing else to have a complete vanilla install on my desktop, and can get the whole thing set up in a matter of minutes should I ever need to reinstall. Here's the other thing:
People like to throw around the misconception that software updates "break" hackintosh setups. Okay, granted, I haven't been on the "scene" for that long, but I think the technology and methods have gotten advanced enough to where this is a thing of the past. In my relatively short experience with osx86, the only update that did any kind of damage to hackintosh systems was 10.6.2 and that was ONLY for netbooks with atom CPUs. Not a problem for a desktop, especially when you can customize your own hardware.
Another plus, your hackintosh will be guaranteed to be several times faster and more modern than any desktop apple ever makes, period. As long as the hardware is supported, which nearly all of it is, the sky is really the limit. SLI works now, dual monitors are no problem, new CPUs, hell last time I checked they found a way to install straight from the DVD, no need for any bootloaders.
Which brings me to my last point - the whole thing about KPs, tinkering, always swapping out kexts, etc. sounds like a load of crap to me. If that's really your experience, then you clearly have either very old components or just incompatible hardware, bad choice on your part. In my experience, even though people had a lot of difficulty getting osx86 working on my mobo, it is possible, and I have had absolutely zero problems since I got everything working initially. I haven't needed to modify a single kext, I haven't gotten a single KP, everything WORKS just like a mac does.
So I really suggest that you try it out for yourself. It's absolutely worth it if you put the time into it, because like I said, once you get it worked out and get comfortable with the process that goes into building a hackintosh, you'll love yourself for the money you save.
