You got a new Mac for Christmas? Awesome. But don’t let Justin Long’s smarmy face fool you, it doesn’t just give you a warm hug and set itself up. Here are 10 things you need to do pronto:

1. Check Out Snow Leopard’s Interface Tweaks: They’re not life-altering, but Apple’s spiffed up the OS X interface in a couple of ways in Snow Leopard. Notably, there’s Dock Expose (which works like Windows 7’s Aero Peek) to show you all the windows of open app by clicking and holding on its icon in the dock. Also, giant, scalable thumbnail previews.

2. Move All Your Stuff: The funny thing about switching OSes or moving to a new one is that it’s really not hard anymore, since so much of the stuff we do is online. The most complicated gambit for most people, I’d wager, is moving your iTunes library to a new machine—especially going from Windows to Mac—since organizing that stuff (if you’re anal about it like me) takes forever. Luckily, there’s a hack for that. And if you’re going from old Mac to new Mac, well it’s pretty easy to move all your crap with the built-in Migration Assistant.

3. Learn What’s Actually Under the Hood of Snow Leopard: Apple says a lot of the magic of Snow Leopard is actually under the hood, so you can’t see it, like Grand Central Dispatch, which promises in the future to make applications use all of those cores in your machine that much better to become superfaster. Or OpenCL, which uses your graphics card for non-graphics applications to go more fasterer. And there’s a whole bunch of other standards Apple’s real big on too.

4. Don’t Buy MobileMe, Sync Your Stuff With Yahoo or Google: Don’t buy MobileMe. Instead, sync your contacts with Google, straight from Address Book, and use Google Sync to deliver ’em to your phone. Same deal with calendars—use the open standard CalDAV to sync iCal with Google or Yahoo, which is as simple as putting in your account info now. And you can upload photos to Flickr directly from iPhoto. Online storage? That’s free too.

5. Install Windows: Whether you do it through Boot Camp so you can play PC games (’cause gaming on a Mac sucks, at best) or use Parallels or Fusions to virtualize it and run alongside your Mac apps, with Windows 7 being $30 with a valid .edu address, there’s no reason not to. It’s even easier to move your Windows apps and files over that you wanna keep if you’re making the slow transition, with Parallels Switch edition, which has a handy USB transfer tool.

6. Back Up to Any NAS With Time Machine: Time Machine, OS X’s built-in backup, is indispensable. Unfortunately, if you wanna do it over the network, it’s kinda limited, unless you know what you’re doing. After you figure out your network storage of choice (HP’s Windows Home Server with Time Machine compatibility is a damn good option; and for those on a budget, there’s Iomega’s ix2 200), it takes just a few minutes a couple of lines of code in Terminal to get your Time Machine backup going on any NAS you please.

7. Make It Play Nice With PCs On Your Network: If you get a NAS, you obviously don’t have to worry about moving crap back and forth directly between your Macs and PCs, but if you want a method that will work every single time, this is how to do it. It’s progressively easier with newer versions of Windows—stuff seems to just work more often.

8. Forget Apple TV, Stream to Your Xbox or PS3: If you’ve already got an Xbox 360 or PS3 (who doesn’t?) there’s no reason to bother with another media streamer, even if you’re ditching Windows. The programs Connect 360 and Rivet will stream music, movies and photos from your Mac to your Xbox for $20. For the PS3, there’s MediaLink, from the guys who make Connect 360, which does pretty much the same deal, but with slightly better integration with iTunes and iPhoto. The P2P app Vuze—which is free—also streams videos to Xbox 360 and PS3 from any OS it runs on, but obviously it’s a little less feature-rich.

9. Download the Best Free Software: At first, there seems to be less freeware on a Mac, but you just need to know where to look. Lifehacker’s essential free apps has you covered on everything from the best IM app (Adium) to better disc burning (Burn) to video playback (VLC, of course).

10. Remote Control It: Sure, you could shell out for MobileMe to use Back to My Mac—except, you shouldn’t—but why bother when you do the same thing and remote control your computer from anywhere with VNC? An afternoon and you’re done.

That’s it from us. Share your own tips and tricks in the comments, and Merry Christmas!

My brother worships two things: God and Subwoofers.

We were raised to be quiet, well-mannered Lutherans. But for Erik, there was nothing quiet about the gospel. In church, he sang as loud as he could. He didn’t care what anyone else thought – he was reaching out to the Lord and it was our problem if it made our ears ring.

One Sunday, the rumbling bass and baritone voices in the choir sang, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and Erik felt God’s presence. That rattle and boom was God’s voice literally vibrating his heart. We were still young but it decided everything: he would do the Lord’s work and it would be loud.

He enrolled in seminary as soon as he could, spent some time in the Holy Land and discovered that a low-end 25 watt sub could not adequately convey the genius of either John Paul Jones bass work on Led Zeppelin IV or the sermons of that other John Paul. Both required an upgrade to a 125 watt Miller & Kreisel MK II sub.

God understood.

My brother must not have mentioned his acoustic theory of divinity when he was ordained because the Bishop assigned him to an elderly congregation in rural Washington State. The greeting committee could hear Pastor Erik coming from miles away – the sound of a booming bass floated across the raspberry fields and through the apple orchards. Things didn’t quiet down after he parked his car in the church’s gravel parking lot. Erik rejects silences with a roaringly good-natured laugh and a voice that would feel at home in the Super Dome. The senior citizens responded by permanently notching down their hearing aids.

Pastor Erik didn’t mind – he just spoke louder and pointed out some immediate problems with the pretty, white steepled church. First, the 20 year old sound system was not up to the task of conveying God’s word.

“This is the Word of God we’re talking about,” he said. “It needs dignity and a high power 12-inch subwoofer with a neodymium magnet and a vented enclosure.”

The Church Elders blinked. Pastor Erik was not like their other ministers.

This young whippersnapper wanted to take this flock in a new direction. It didn’t matter if they needed walkers, dialysis or a hip replacement to get there– they were going to hear and feel God’s word.

He met any resistance with an out-pouring of Lutheran wisdom. Why spend thousands of dollars upgrading the sound system for a congregation of only 80 people? Because in 1541, Martin Luther himself said, “Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.” Pastor Erik watched his congregants closely and asked if they were willing to run the world’s greatest treasure through a dusty old sound board that muddled the low range? Would Martin Luther want that?

The Elders decided to approve a budget of $9000 and Pastor Erik set to work.

His first move: bring in Jim Hall, an acoustician who has spent 42 years installing commercial audio systems in the Northwest. Hall and the Pastor huddled near the altar and laid out a battle plan. Hall wanted to deploy a four speaker TOA HX-5 variable dispersion system above the altar to ensure speech clarity. It’s what he typically recommended for small churches.

“But it won’t rock, will it?” the Pastor asked.

Hall was a little surprised – most churches were content with the HX-5 system. But this minister was sharp. He knew the HX-5 couldn’t deliver the low end. The Pastor was asking Hall to push himself, to dig deep and that could mean only one thing: the FB-120B.

The 120B is a crunk-ready 600 watt sub guaranteed to strip the paint off the steeple of any church silly enough to order it. It’s exactly what Pastor Erik was looking for.

The system took eight hours to install. They added a 16 channel Mackie 1604 VLZ3 mixing board, an EAW CAZ 1400 dual-amp for the HX-5 and an additional CAZ 800 amp interlaced with an Ashly cross-over for the sub. The final touch: two 1 inch tweeters over the choir.

“It’s got to be the best system for a church its size in the Northwest ,” Jim Hall says.

To test it, Pastor Erik grabbed the nearest CD he could find: a copy of Veggie Tales left behind by a pre-schooler. He pressed play and the voice of Larry the Cucumber boomed across rural Washington as if Abraham himself had just come down from the mountain to tell the world that he had a new hat and it was made of lettuce.

Pastor Erik heard the music and it was good. It didn’t matter what the Cucumber was babbling about. The tune sent its shock waves through his bones and brushed across his soul like a divine wind.

Now and truly, God was in da house.

Joshua Davis is a Contributing Editor for Wired Magazine who wrote about deep sea cowboys and the world’s largest diamond heist. (Both of which are being adapted for film.) He’s also the lightest man to ever compete in the US Sumo Open.

If Amazon is Santa, 400 folks living in RVs outside the Coffeyville, Kansas fulfillment center this winter are the elves.

A few years back Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard flipped the bird to their desk jobs, packed their belongings in a custom 17-foot solar-powered fiberglass camper, and hit the road to live “at the intersection of Epic and Awesome.” A couple months ago, while staying with friends, they noticed that Amazon was luring RVers to Coffeyville, Kansas, the site of the retail giant’s original and largest fulfillment center.

“We were located in San Diego at the time,” explained Cherie. “We’re part of a community of younger full-time RVers on Nurvers.com, a group of non-retired-age folks who are living the mobile lifestyle and kind of going outside the norms of ‘Wait for retirement to travel.'” They noticed other RVers were flocking to Kansas to work for Amazon. The pay wasn’t great—just above $10-an-hour, typically—but Chris and Cherie were planning on being in St. Louis for the holidays. Why not kill a month in Kansas working for Amazon?

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and the self-styled “technomads” were putting down stakes at a state park about 20 miles from the four enormous but dull warehouses that comprise the Coffeyville hub.

Their first day inside, Chris was awed. “Walking inside reminded me of the scene from Indiana Jones when they abandon the Ark in that giant warehouse. It’s three stories high. It feels like an industrial library. Shelves going up and up and up.” Hundreds of employees scurried, some “orange-badges” or “green-badges” hired by two temporary employment services mixed with the sought-after blue-badges of full-time Amazon employees, guided to their next destination by computers that flashed lights when bins were full or guided workers through the maze with handheld computers. “Pickers are basically playing a human Pac-Man game. They’ve got a computer scanner that they carry around that tells them where to go. They find their little shelf. One slot might be a book. The next shelf over might be a toaster. Or an iPod. The next slot after that might be a pair of jeans.”

Fiberglass City

Amazon didn’t always lure in “workcampers” from the RV community.

“From what the agency people had told us, Amazon had a bad experience busing in people from Tulsa,” says Chris. “There was a lot of theft and a lot of people who weren’t really serious about the job.”

Workers from Tulsa were adding a 4-hour round-trip commute to an already grueling 10-to-12 hour shift, Cherie is quick to add. “They’d get there exhausted.”

Enter the workcampers, people making a go at living in their RVs full time—many of whom might be otherwise overqualified. “I think Amazon was skeptical at first,” says Cherie. “But after the first trial year they were very, very impressed. Workcampers came in enthusiastic about working, since most are professionals. We’ve owned businesses or been managers.” White collar workers, trying their hand at the gypsy life. Even better, the workcampers were able to stay locally.

Not all of the camps provided for the workcampers were exactly inviting.

Chris and Cherie pulled into the one just before Thanksgiving, but could tell it wouldn’t make for a pleasant stay. “The closest one was a city park called Walter Johnson. RVs were very close together. Half the campsites had full hookups, which meant they had water, electricity, and sewer dump on-site. Half the sites just had electricity and water and they had what they call a ‘Honey Wagon’ that comes around and pumps your sewage out a few times a week.” Some RVers had been in Coffeyville since August.

Worse, it was cramped and muddy. “Coffeyville also had a flood three years ago, so it was very, very wet and muddy because the area had been washed out, then rained on recently.” They eventually moved on to a state park, which was lovely, but also four times farther away. They rarely had time to enjoy the scenery.

“We were on the night shift,” says Chris, “Our day would start when we would wake up at three in the afternoon. Work started at five.”

“Every shift starts with what they call a ‘Stand Up.’ You gather in one area with your usual department—ours was called ‘Sortable Singles,’ which sounds like it should be the name of a dating site—and they’d count off how many people they needed in each department. Run through a few announcements. Give you a few safety tips. And then they lead you through five minutes of group stretches.”

Cherie was mainly a packer, putting items in the box and scanning them. Chris, on the other hand, was a “water spider.” He explains, “A water spider is responsible for keeping all the packers supplied, so ideally they’d never need to stand up and leave their station to get any other supplies like all the different sizes of boxes, plus making sure their tape machines and paper-spitter machines are operating.”

“I never quite exactly figured out why they call it a water spider. My guess is back in the history of assembly line jobs, the water spider would be the person who would bring people on the line water to drink. Nobody seemed to know!”

The Mocha Factory

Work was monotonous and—for a couple who had been living a relative life of leisure—full of endless hours of standing on one’s feet.

“24-Hour Fitness, Amazon-style,” laughs Chris. Cherie liked to think of it as having “a personal trainer for 60 hours a week.”

Inside the warehouses, machines and man alike were controlled by Amazon’s computerized assembly line.

In one part of the factory, Chris watched two giant elliptical carousels, each one the size of a football field, carry wooden trays around at 15mph. “All the items are coming in the totes on one side of this giant machine. There are people who take each individual item, scan them and put them on the trays as they go by. The trays get to a chute where their order is being assembled, tilt, and the product flies down into that space. When all the items for a particular order are assembled in one place an orange light comes on and somebody comes by.” Above, another carousel brought an endless procession of empty boxes to be filled with the orders.

It wasn’t exactly what Cherie had envisioned. “When we told people were going to do this, someone said ‘Whenever I click the order button on Amazon, I always imagine a chorus of happy, singing Oompa-Loompas riding around on Segways and shipping my stuff.’ Well…no. It’s not exactly like that.”

“The computer has to prioritize how it’s going to send out all the pickers in this giant facility. So someone could order a book and a sweater and an iPod, and those could be in completely different corners of the whole facility. But somehow they all arrive within about 30 minutes of each other.” It’s efficiency even Willy Wonka could love.

Chris and Cherie wouldn’t work another season at Coffeyville, but not because they were miserable. “Everybody treated each other really nicely!” says Chris. It’s just that the two are “experience junkies, craving the new,” even if working for Amazon certainly gave them a fresh perspective on American culture.

“You’d have a tote come down the line, and you’d have adult toys right next to kid toys in the same bin,” laughs Cherie. “The Obama Chia Pet was an oddity. And the Bill Clinton corkscrew. And I did have a tote one afternoon that was full of mooning gnomes.”

Chris geeked on it pretty hard. (Before he became an migrant worker, Chris was a founding editor for boot magazine—later known as Maximum PC. He also worked for Palm.) “Just getting to experience that type of work, to literally see consumer culture flow beneath your fingertips, was absolutely fascinating. You feel the pulse of the market.”

Besides their paychecks, all they’re left with are memories—cameras weren’t allowed inside.

“One of the rules at Amazon is that you’re not allowed to bring anything into the facility that they sell.” Chris went through a bit of withdrawal. “One of the hardest things about the job was going without my iPhone for a month. It was a great way to break the addiction of wanting to Twitter about things. You’d be like, ‘Oh my God, I just saw this Bill Clinton corkscrew and you won’t believe where the corkscrew comes out.’ But oh crap, I can’t tweet.”

This year’s release of Firefox 3.5 gave us a lot of reasons to like it, but its extensibility remains everyone’s favorite feature. These add-ons and theme tools were the most popular in the year gone by.

This list is culled from a straight listing of the most popular posts that offered a Firefox extension for download in 2009. We’re not including posts about configuring Firefox, or even our own hand-rolled Firefox add-on packs—even if they were pretty popular, too. Let’s get to the good stuff.

Firefox 3.7 Theme Makes Your Browser Look Awesome

One of the greatest things about Firefox is that its development happens way out wide in the open. When the design workers start coming up with preliminary sketches of a new release, anyone can peek at them and even compile them into a theme, which does just what the headline suggests.

All-Glass Firefox Enables Slick Transparency Effects

Windows Vista and 7 feature some fairly nice looking transparency effects, but if your primary browser doesn’t use them, it can feel a bit disconnected. All-Glass Firefox v2 tweaks your browser to look just, well, proper in its fancy-pants surroundings.

“Vacuum Places Improved” Speeds Up Firefox with a Click of Your Mouse

You can speed up Firefox by cleaning up its fragmented database, and the Vacuum Places Improved 0.3 extension automates that admittedly pain-in-the-butt process.

Gmail Redesigned 3.0 Focuses on Speed and Message Space

Google Redesigned, a multi-site suite that trades Google’s blue/white/minimal look for a darker, sleeker feel, kept improving its transformative powers this year, adding a host of improvements in its 3.0 release, and later releasing a new version with GReader Redesigned for the RSS hounds.

Dislike 0.2 Adds a Disapproving Dislike Button to Facebook

“I’m having SUCH a bad day—the cleaning lady TOTALLY left her Pine Sol smell all over my bed linens!” That, my friends, is why clever JavaScript tweakers created the Dislike extension.

TinEye Adds Reverse Image Lookup to Firefox

Many of the pictures and illustrations you find across the web aren’t in their original form—and many can be had at better, perhaps more wallpaper-worthy sizes. The TinEye extension makes it a simple right-click maneuver to search out similar copies of any image you come across.

SkipScreen Lets You Pass Go and Collect Your Download

Sometimes, great stuff has to be hosted on public download services, because the file—or the attention it’s getting—is just too much for our meek little personal sites. And the download sites often make it as painful as possible to grab those files. SkipScreen acts as an automated intermediary, jumping through the necessary hoops and entering the key presses required.

FireFound Tracks Your Stolen Computer, Nukes Your Personal Data

This neat little extension, winner of the Extend Firefox 3.5 contest, utilizes lots of Firefox’s built-in features, like geo-location and the extension framework, to offer wary laptop users a way to nuke their personal data, passwords, and history if necessary, track where their machine is logging on after a theft, and cull all kinds of data from the thief. FireFound is, in other words, a smart thing to install if your laptop ever leaves the home.

Gui:config Gives Easy Access to Hidden Firefox Settings

A lot of helpful stuff is tucked away in Firefox’s about:config menus. Gui:config brings them into focus and offers a graphical way to manage them. As the How-To Geek puts it, it’s amazing that this isn’t something being considered for mainstream distribution in the browser.

Memory Fox Manages Firefox’s Memory Use, Aims to Keep It Low

(Windows only): Firefox is decently light with memory on startup, but extensions and plug-ins drag it down as you actually use it. Memory Fox monitors Firefox’s memory use and, once it reaches your pre-set limit, whips it back into shape.

Daum Blue Firefox Theme is Clean, Simple, and Elegant

(Windows only): Well, the headline and picture kind of say it all about Daum Blue, but it’s worth noting that beyond looks, it’s also fairly customizable, and looks even better on Vista and Windows 7 systems.

Decreased Productivity Helps You Browse at Work Without Getting Busted

Sure, kind of anathema for this site’s stated mission, but giving your mind a break at work has real mental benefits, even if your boss doesn’t think so.

UrlbarExt Adds Super Powers to the Awesome Bar

If you’re likely to do more at a web site than just simply bookmark it, UrlbarExt is like a Leatherman for your AwesomeBar. Head to a site’s root, search the site on Google, and do much more from a small array of address bar buttons.

Foxmarks Becomes Xmarks, Adds Search and Suggestion Features

Another headline that pretty much says it all. We weren’t a big fan of Xmarks‘ new “discovery” features, but its growing reach into Chrome and other browsers make the former Foxmarks’ expansion a good thing.

Magnetiser Downloads Torrents When No Torrent File Is Available

Given the recent legal crackdown on BitTorrent-centered sites, magnet links (explained here) are increasingly popular. Magnetiser makes it easy to track down a working torrent link to grab the file you’re looking for.

Integrated Gmail Updates with Improved Looks and Handy Features

It must be mentioned that, beyond smooshing together Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader into one neatly-arranged Gmail page, Integrated Gmail also customizes every niggling detail of those combined apps, making it worth the try-out, even if you think you like your Google spaces separated into different tabs.

Omnibar Extension Collapses Firefox’s Address and Search Boxes into One

Omnibar is one of the clever ways Firefox can make itself into a Google Chrome clone, and we love that kind of openness ’round here.

Invisible Hand Subtly Shows Best Web Prices

If you’re always looking at online purchases and wondering if you could save more before pulling the trigger, Invisible Hand affirms your hunches for you, dropping down and showing lower prices wherever it can find them.

Ubiquity Sees Major Update, New Look, Better Performance

Mozilla’s future-facing automation and shortcut engine, Ubiquity, continued to get awesome-r in 2009.

App Tabs Creates Permanent, Icon-Only Tabs, Firefox 4.0-Style

We dug the idea of permanent, favicon-only tabs when a helpful reader explained it to us, but the App Tabs extension took a multi-step process and made it far more simple.

Not seeing your favorite add-on released in 2009 here, or covered anywhere at Lifehacker? Can’t believe your favorite app doesn’t get more attention? Let’s hear all about it in the comments.

Apple makes some of the most specialized mainstream devices around, but the gear is never very cheap and, let’s face it, it stinks for any one company to own your wallet. So here are the best alternatives for each iProduct:

(If you’d like to see this post in non-gallery form, just click here.)

Apple iPhone 3GS ($199) -> Motorola Droid ($199)
When the iPhone was released, it was a generation, at least, beyond the entire smartphone market. Now, many manufacturers have worked hard to catch up. And while the iPhone is still my personal favorite, I understand wanting a phone on the Verizon network rather than AT&T. Besides, the Droid hardware is fantastic, and its software, Android 2.0, feels far more like a full-featured OS than the original. Just as we said in our full review, “It’s this simple: If you don’t buy an iPhone, buy a Droid.”

What you gain:
• Physical keyboard
• Fewer dropped calls
• Memory slot expansion

What you lose:
• iTunes integration
• Decent built-in media player

iPod Touch ($199, 8GB) -> Zune HD ($219, 16GB)
I know, I know. Why buy a Zune? If you’re heavily invested in iTunes albums, the answer is, no reason. But for those who are willing to break from the Apple music infrastructure, the Zune HD is actually an awesome PMP. The aluminum case is very sharp, with an OLED screen that’s richer than any iPod (though slightly worse in the sun). The Zune software, coupled with optional unlimited download subscription packages, is every bit as hip and convenient as Cover Flow and iTunes, provided you run Windows. Oh, also, you don’t need to drop $300 to get a decent amount of storage and you get HD TV-Out and a not-so-bad TV interface to boot. So when you’re sick of the little screen, you can go as big as you’d like.

What you gain:
• 8GB more storage (base model)
• HD Radio
• Unlimited music subscription with free MP3s
• HD TV-Out and an on-screen TV interface

What you lose:
• iTunes integration
• About a billion apps

iPod Nano ($180, 16GB) -> Flip Ultra HD ($150)
The obvious contender to the iPod Nano used to be the Zune 16. But now? You can’t even get that model of Zune. And with a built-in camcorder, be it a bit on the crappy side, the Nano truly is a unique contender in its space. However, I ask you this: Don’t you already have an MP3 player? Seriously, it’s not possible that you don’t. OK then, just buy the Flip Ultra HD, the best bang for your buck pocket camcorder on the market. And use your old iPod because it probably still works fine.

What you gain:
• HD video

What you lose:
• I mean, it’s not an iPod, or any kind of media player, obviously

iPod Shuffle ($80, 4GB) -> Sansa Clip+ ($70, 8GB)
The new Shuffle is basically nonexistent, a device that, while remarkable in terms of minimalist design, may be a tad difficult to wield when you just want to play that one song you want to hear. Enter the Sansa Clip+, an chunky but still tiny MP3 player lauded by audiophiles (if such a thing is possible) that supports up to 16GB of MicroSD expansion. Save even more money by buying the 2GB version (just $40) and sticking in a spare MicroSD. And as we said in our review, the Clip+ is “the best low-end mp3 player on the market, without question.”

What you gain:
• Sound quality
• MicroSD expansion
• An actual screen
• Voice recorder
• The freedom to choose any headphones

What you lose:
• iTunes
• Trash-talking Voice Over function

Apple TV ($229, 160GB) -> Asus O!Play ($99)
No matter what direction you go, you’re pretty much always better off not buying an Apple TV. It’s basically a closed box that hates supporting not only external codecs but external drives, too, and you can forget about navigating to files on your own network—even ones stored on your precious Time Capsule. The $99 Asus O!Play is our favorite budget way to play media in any codec under the sun, from files on a Mac or PC formatted drive or streamed from pretty much any NAS drive. As for watching movies on demand, chances are, your cable box already does that. Need more options? The LG BD390 is an excellent Wi-Fi-equipped Blu-ray player with Netflix and Vudu video, and DivX support. And heck, I’d even recommend the $199 Xbox 360 as a Netflix/DivX machine with Windows Media Center Extender capabilities. Basically, you can’t go wrong here. Everything is better than Apple TV, unless you have a library full of purchased iTunes music and movies, and if you do, you probably have Apple TV already, so go enjoy it.

What you gain:
• Mega codec support
• Ability to stream your video files from computers and NAS drives
• Cash in your pocket

What you lose:
• The iTunes video ball and chain

MacBook ($999) -> Dell Studio 14z ($750)
As Mark Spoonauer said in our best Windows laptop roundup, “Think of it as the poor man’s MacBook-with better specs.” No, the Dell Studio 14z doesn’t run OS X, but the Core 2 Duo laptop weighs .3lbs lighter than a MacBook while offering 1GB more RAM (base), 70GB more storage, a backlit keyboard and nicer built-in speakers.

What you gain:
• More storage
• More RAM
• Backlit keyboard
• Less weight

What you lose:
• OS X
• Optical drive
• Flash card reader

MacBook Pro ($1200) -> HP Envy ($1700)
I’m not sure anyone should actually choose the 13-inch Envy (full review) over the 13-inch MacBook Pro (full review), but the Envy is the closest knock-off on the market. For the $500 Envy premium, you do shed .8lbs off the MacBook Pro, coming in at just 3.7lbs (which is crazy-light for a laptop of this size). And you’ll score an extra GB of RAM along with a more powerful, discrete Radeon HD 4330 graphics. But we’re still talking about $500 extra for a computer that, ultimately, doesn’t feel as solid as a unibody Mac. Plus, if you really want to run Win 7, that plays just fine on the MBP, too. As for the MBP 15, there’s really no ideal alternative. And if you were considering the 15-inch Envy, think again.

What you gain:
• More overall power
• Less weight
• Prettier screen

What you lose:
• OS X
• Optical drive
• Frame rigidity

iMac ($1200, 21.5-inch) -> HP TouchSmart 600 ($1,050, 23-inch)
The latest iMac (full review) is a beautiful machine, no doubt. But there are alternatives to this famed all-in-one. Our favorite is the HP TouchSmart 600 (full review), which is sort of the souped-up Civic to Apple’s classic Porsche. Both will do a quarter mile in the same time—with Core 2 Duo processors—but the TouchSmart has the shiny detailing and LED underlighting of a street racer, while sprucing up the package with a decent touch display coupled with special Twitter, Facebook and even recipe box apps designed for the system. Especially as a kitchen computer, the HP TouchSmart is a valid alternative to the iMac.

What you gain:
• Larger, touchscreen
• Glitzy accents with customizable LED underlighting
• Clever apps
• HDMI input for home theater fun

What you lose:
• OS X
• Understated design

MacBook Air ($1500) -> Dell Adamo XPS ($2000)
There’s only one laptop on the market that can confidently purge alongside the MacBook Air, and that’s the Dell Adamo XPS. While the price premium seems absurd at first, keep in mind that the Adamo XPS, at about half the thickness of the Air, is loaded with a 128GB flash drive and 4GB of RAM stock (while the MacBook Air will run $1800 in a similar SSD configuration and maxed at 2GB of RAM). If you’re considering an Air, you want a computer that says “I’m good at spending money.” And the Adamo XPS will most certainly fulfill that need.

What you gain:
• 1 USB port
• Ethernet jack
• 2GB of RAM
• A clasp that opens from the heat of your finger

What you lose:
• OS X
• About $500

Mac Mini ($600) -> Acer AspireRevo R3610 ($330)
If I had the choice between a Mac Mini (full review) and the AspireRevo R3610—spending someone else’s money—I would still choose the Revo for its HTPC prowess. The Mac Mini has always been a promising system falling just short of its potential in terms of both price and performance. Meanwhile, the absurdly cheap Revo, equipped with Ion tech that’s more than happy to handle 1080p video outputted to your TV through HDMI (as opposed to Apple’s need for funky wiring and/or hard-to-find specialized adapters), is kind enough to include 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD, HDMI, eSATA, VGA, 6 USB ports, card reader, wireless-N and a wireless keyboard and mouse for roughly half the price of a Mini. The only thing the Revo isn’t optimal for is browsing Flash pages, that is, until we finally see an update that makes Ions and Flash play well together.

What you gain:
• HDMI out
• 1 USB port
• eSATA port
• Wireless keyboard and mouse
• Like $300

What you lose:
• OS X
• FireWire

Time Capsule (1TB, $299) -> D-Link DIR-685 (Expandable, $215)
The convenience of a Time Capsule, a combination wireless router and NAS, is tough to beat because it’s so unique. But I wouldn’t call the task impossible. The D-Link DIR-685 (full review) is a wireless-N router with a range that’s competitive with Apple’s own AirPort Extreme. You choose your storage capacity by sticking in your own 2.5-inch drive. Oh, plus it’s a photo frame, BitTorrent downloader, iTunes server, FTP server, network file sharing with user management and even a UPnP streamer to video players. The only thing it isn’t? Time Machine compliant. I know, I know. If you’re willing to part with the built-in router, however, then another excellent choice is the Iomega Ix2-200 NAS (full review)—and that is Time Machine capable.

What you gain:
• Swappable storage
• Tons of advanced networking features
• BitTorrent downloading
• Media flexibility
• Digital photo frame

What you lose:
• Time Machine support (if this is a problem, check out Iomega’s alternative)

Mac Pro ($2,500) -> Hackintosh (far less $$$)
There is one reason you want to buy a Mac Pro, and that’s for OS X. So I’m not going to waste time by pretending there’s any suitable alternative by someone like Dell or HP. Your best bet is to build a Hackintosh, a custom PC with a bootlegged OS X. Just keep in mind, you won’t be able to build this system like any old Windows PC—you’ll need to follow a guide with pretested hardware to construct something you can be sure will work. Luckily, such a guide is available, built by our friends from Lifehacker (see it here).

What you gain:
• Literally, thousands of dollars
• Gaudy case mods

What you lose:
• Peace of mind (there’s always the slight chance of Hackintosh deactivation)
• Easy component upgrades