You know as well as me that there's such a thing as false economy. Gotta look at more than the price, number of cores, and the gigglehurtz when comparing machines. How many hours are you going to spend unloading the shovelware on that cheap machine? Are there Linux drivers for that cutting edge sound card?
That's a really big advantage of Macs (and older machines)...
:-)
Of course, the newer machines won't act as space heaters either.
Happy hunting.
Cheers,
Scott.