The Mac vs PC debate is as old as the hills, and the whole thing frustrates me morethan the reformation of Take That. It is full of irrational hate and biasedaggression and it's all totally ridiculous.

Some of it reminds me a little of the situation in the Middle East: the long-fought conflict between two goodpeoples - the Israeli's and the Palestinians - is a lot like the atmospherethat exists between PC users and Mac users.

Many religious people - and not just those in certain areasof the world - feel threatened by the existence of other religions. This causesfriction and fighting, and despite the overwhelming majority of peacefulreligious people, it's the violent ones that get all the attention.

For example:

Minority man one: "This is our holy land"

Minority man two: "No it's not, it's ours."

Minority man one: "Wanna fight aboutit?"

Similarly, I've noticed that most of the very hardcore Macenthusiasts absolutely hate PCs. And so is the case the other way around. Everychance that many Mac fans get, they'll be slagging off Windows Vista, saying howutterly rubbish it is and singing the praises of Mac OS X. This is despite thefact that 99.99% of these people have never even used Windows Vista - many have never even seen a computer running it.

Mac man: "I love Macs. I hate PCs, even though I haven't usedone for five years. I would be prepared to pay more for a Mac as I wouldfor a PC because they're so much better. I don't want to be lining the pockets of thatmoney-grabbing swine, Bill Gates, and so I choose to conveniently forget aboutthe fact that I'm effectively being shaken down by Steve Jobs who charges meover the odds to use his products."

Most PC users accept the existence of Macs; I think that Macdie hard's feel so threatened by the complete domination of Windows PCs thatthey rebel and attack the whole idea of PCs. A lot like certain religiousfundamentalists, only without the explosions and the killing. In retaliation,PC users attack Macs.

PC man: "Macs are so rubbish. They are too expensive andthey're not compatible with my software. I enjoy criticising Macs mainlybecause I am aware of how much it annoys the hardcore Mac elite fanboyenthusiasts. Really though, I just hate Macs because i don't understand them."

But it's not just the PC vs Mac debate where thispseudo-religious tech tension exists either. Most tech-savvy web surfers arealso entrenched in another war: Firefox vs Internet Explorer.

It's Firefox users in general who have an overwhelminghatred for Internet Explorer and refuse to use it. Many web designers refuse todesign websites that work with IE if it means making compatibility alterations.In the face of this hatred, many IE users defend themselves by attackingFirefox.

The problem is, of course, in the same way that PC usersrarely use Macs and Mac users rarely use PCs, is that users of these webbrowsers have not even used the other one.

Have most Firefox users used the latest version of InternetExplorer 7? Probably not. Have IE7 users had much experience with Firefox? Unlikely.Are they making an informed choice about which browser to use? On the whole,no.

Man one: "I refuse to use Firefox. It offers me nothing thatInternet Explorer doesn't give me and I have no reason to change. I resent thefact that the guerrilla Firefox-using web design community intentionallyneglects the Internet Eplorer users, even though a massive majority of websurfers use that program."