Take, for example, (PDF link) by frequently-quoted analyst Roger L. Kay, the President of Endpoint Technologies Associates. "What Price Cool?" sets out to discover the "hidden costs" of owning Macs versus owning Windows PCs--but you don't need to flip to the end of the 10-page report to tell how it's going to end. Spoiler: Windows PCs are cheaper! It's right there on page one, where it reads "Sponsor: Microsoft."

The Redmond-based software giant has recently gone to great lengths to point out Windows machines' inherent superiority, attempting to and . So it's hardly shocking to find that this report retreads the same ground whilst applying a thin patina of carefully selected "facts."

The meat of the piece is the last three pages which feature the "realistic point of view" of a hypothetical family of four, including two charts that line up the prices of building what are supposedly comparable Windows PC and Mac systems. The hypothetical dad's spreadsheet examines the differences in cost over five years and--amazingly--concludes that buying Macs will be a mind-boggling US$3,330 more expensive.

There are a few flaws here--okay, there are several flaws here, and to pick them apart one-by-one would only be redundant, repetitive, and redundant, but let's take a look at just a few of them to get the idea.

For one thing, the report repeats the age-old fallacy that once you buy into a Mac you have to buy into the whole Apple ecosystem, despite the fact that we largely left that world behind around the time that people were wondering who precisely had let the dogs out.