Reinforcing other recent reports of the Mac’s continued strength in the market, a survey taken in early November by Rockville, Md.-based ChangeWave Research indicates that more potential buyers than ever plan to buy a Mac in the near future.

Of the respondents who said they planned to buy a computer in the next 90 days, 29 percent said they’d get a Mac laptop and another 29 percent said they’d get a Mac desktop.

Apple’s laptop number is actually the highest in the survey – Dell came in second at 28 percent, followed by Hewlett-Packard at 21 percent. Amazing.

On the desktop side, Dell was first with 31 percent with Apple’s 29 percent good for second. Hewlett Packard was third with 24 percent.

The numbers are even more impressive when compared to the historical data in the survey. In September 2006, only 17 percent were planning on buying Apple laptops and 18 percent Apple desktops. If you go back to October 2005, the numbers fall to 16 percent for laptops and 11 percent for desktops.

Questions on customer satisfaction offered at least one clue as to why Macs have grown more popular – Apple leads in this category by a huge margin.

A chart showing the percentage of respondents who were “very satisfied” shows Apple with 80 percent, far ahead of all the PC vendors, which range from Dell at 61 percent to Lenovo at 49 percent. Another 18 percent were “somewhat satisfied.” Only 2 percent were “very unsatisfied” with zero reporting in the “somewhat unsatisfied” category.

The combined “unsatisfied” scores for Apple’s rivals ranged from 6 percent for Dell to 14 percent for Lenovo.

Still more positive news for the Mac turns up in the operating system segment of the survey.

Asked if Leopard, the latest version of the Mac OS X, would make them “more likely” or “less likely” to buy an Apple computer in the future, 24 percent said “more likely” while 66 percent said it would have no effect. None said it would make them less likely to buy a Mac.

Another question asks. “Which operating system would you like to have preinstalled on the computers(s) you plan to buy in the next 90 days?”

Leopard was the choice of 28 percent – the highest individual number, though the Windows percentages were split by the assorted flavors of Vista and XP. Vista’s totals add up to 42 percent, with Vista Home Premium the choice of 20 percent.

Microsoft might be concerned that more than a year after the launch of Vista 40 percent of potential PC buyers would prefer Windows XP on their new computer.

As pleased as any Mac loyalist would be with these survey results, one must wonder a little at how Apple’s numbers could be so high, particularly the percentages of people planning to buy Macs. Even the most optimistic U.S. market share surveys have pegged the Mac at only about 8 percent overall, with about 12 percent of the laptop market.

How could 29 percent of a survey sample be planning to buy Macs? It just doesn’t seem possible.

It turns out it depends on who you survey. ChangeWave does not randomly select its samples, but queries a group of 13,000 “senior technology and business executives in leading companies” it calls the “ChangeWave Alliance.”

This explains why Apple does so well in its surveys – what else would you expect from such a group of highly educated and tech-savvy people?

It also bodes well for Apple much further into the future than the 90 day period asked about in the survey. The members of the ChangeWave Alliance are the type of people others look to for leadership and guidance. If nearly one in three of them are going Mac, it could signal a substantial increase in Mac market share over the next year or two, perhaps to the mid-teens or beyond.

It’s almost scary, isn’t it?