Each to their own...
There are certainly circumstances in which a Wintel machine is the best choice. I think these circumstances are less common than is widely perceived, and that most users would be better served with modern Macs running OS X than they can imagine.
That has not been true for long. Prior to OS X, the MacOS was no better than Windows, and, while the hardware was arguably better in Macs, the diversity of software and hardware available on the PC side made PCs a better choice for most (me included).
I've been buying (and building my own) PCs, installing various OSes (DOS, DesqView, OS/2, Linux, FreeBSD, and every flavour of windows from 3.0 to XP Pro) since the early '80s, and I know how to make these systems work. My PC at home runs Win2k and Linux very well indeed, and I rarely have problems with it. I used to use it fairly heavily, and had consistent problems under Win2k with memory leaks when doing lots of slide scanning/photoediting under photoshop, but nothing a reboot wouldn't fix (sill...it was very irritating to have to reboot every few hours to keep the system running when I was working it hard). I never had any problems under Linux, but there were lots of things I never got around to setting up.
Since I purchased my PowerBook, I hardly ever use my PC any more. I can do everything with my PowerBook that I could under Windows or Linux on my PC, it never crashes, it needs almost no set-up or configuration, and I don't have to scan for viruses or spy-ware every week.
Messing around with computers was kind of fun for a few years, but now I like them to work well with a minimum investment of effort on my part. So paying a small extra percentage (actually, my PowerBook was cheaper than a similarly spec'ed Sony, but I'll agree that Macs are, in general, a little more expensive) is worth it to me.
I'd actually encourage any aspiring young computer geeks to build their own and run linux. Then, once they're skilled and getting well-paid, they can buy themselves Macs and use their knowledge to support their clients while they enjoy trouble-free computing on their own systems.
Cheers