WE MIGHT spend the night with an iMac G5, but there's only one computer we'd come home to.

Oh PC, we're sorry, we're so sorry, but we just can't help it. As we gaze at the sleek aluminium and glass, the entrancing 20 or 24 inch widescreen, and the lack - the incredible lack - of a big beige box whirring away at our feet or on our desk, we promise we don't mean to think of straying from the proud format we grew up with, its infinite variety of possible setups and endless range of hardware and software conflicts. But gazing in open-mouthed nerd lust at the new iMac G5, we just can't help ourselves.
"It's akin to yodeling over a violin solo or assigning your child a 1,000 digit alpha-numeric code as a middle name"
We'd never do it, of course. Until something actually forces us to use an Apple computer, like a workplace or a farming accident, there's no way we dyed-in-the-wool PC users will make the switch. Yes, ever since the first iMac, they have looked good. Beautiful even, iconic and pace-setting and way ahead of their time. But we need only look at Britains's male newsreaders and weather forecasters, or at space-loving hero Patrick Moore, to understand that looks aren't everything.

Admittedly, the user experience is uniquely friendly. Intuitive and simple, lacking in crashes and bugs (lies!) navigated with a single button mouse (heresy!) controlled with single clicks (blasphemy!) and no doubt bestowing on the user a zen-like mental hum, generated by the sensation of being truly at one with the operating system. But we happen to like Windows, and the huge variety of customisation that springs up when every man and his dog is inspired to make a funny little programme or device that runs on or fits inside your machine.

The Shed has a friend who has just begun training for Apple customer support. During an intensive four week induction (we picture it as something similar to the eyeballs-held-open scene in A Clockwork Orange) the recruits are shown an overhead projector image of a two-button mouse. "This is what PC users use," they say, as if that is the wrong way of doing things, as if two buttons on a mouse is some hideous overcomplication akin to yodeling over a violin solo or assigning your child a 1,000 digit alpha-numeric code as a middle name. As if the world of Apple is the normal world, and the magical, warts and all world of the PC is some strange foreign entity to be studied at a distance. It's horrible.