I think you may want to examine the facts..
I have always bought premium brand laptops - an upper range Sony VAIO doesn't set you back for less than a MacBook and to me it delivers a heck of a lot more.
The next thing you tell me is that I have to pay for everything on a Mac. True, most comes at a charge, but again, if you look at what you get it's reasonable and I rather pay £10 for something that is of genuine use to me than be a cheapskate and expect the guy at home to do it for free because I'm to cheap to donate (although I would prefer to pay directly instead of handing 30% off to Apple).
I just bought the new OS for less than £30. I can't remember a Micrsoft Windows update that cheap, sorry - especially since that ONE (1, single, uno) purchase allows me to install it any Mac under my control. I also have Office 2008 on the machine (only retained via an update - it won't re-install on Lion). Guess what? It actually comes with THREE licenses. Yes, that is MICROSOFT being so desperate to retain a grip on the market that it offers a 3 for one. Not that I use it much, I prefer OpenOffice (mainly because I find it less resource hungry, which tells you something about the MS product), but it's there. So, on the software side I can get on with less money, yet be completely legal. How is that more expensive?
On top of that, I have a well built, stable machine that is safer from malware (not 100% safe as some people allege, but easier to keep clean), and I have a Unix (BSD) command line available which gives me all the other fun I need, although I'm not sure I'll install any Darwin ports. But I can if I so choose. Try that on a Windows box.
I bought the Airport Extreme WiFi access point, which has a USB port (being me I stuck a hub on that so it offers me printing and disk storage). Well, I can't call what that costs expensive either, especially if you see what the thing actually does for the money.
About the only thing I miss is the fancy graphics that a decent Linux desktop has. I very much like the cube approach to multiple desktops, and that just isn't there for OSX (between you and me, it stinks of "not invented here" syndrome). But I can live with that. And if I can't, well, the machine also has VirtualBox installed too although it would be a bit wasteful to install a whole Ubuntu setup just for fancy graphics) :-).
In conclusion, you may want to lose that illusion of "expensive". You do actually get what you pay for.