I always built my own PCs and then a few years ago I decided to buy a 24" IMAC and I used Bootcamp to use Windows, I liked the style of the machine a lot, and I must admit I never gave the MAC os much of a chance since all my CAD software is only ported to Windows, I ended up buying 3 IMACs and for the first time in my life I had a hard drive fail (I always use SCSI) and not just once but on two of the IMACs and Apple has the most ridiculous repair policy under warranty, they keep your hard drive and will "ALLOW" you to authorize them to send it to one of their authorized recovery companies for $2500-$4000 to retrieve your information that you were dumb enough not to backup. Then the 3rd IMAC, the video card died. Naturally IMACs are very difficult if not impossible to upgrade sans the ram. Plus, as with stereo components, if you have a receiver and it dies, so does your tuner, amp, etc. I like building my own computers and upgrading / repairing at will.
October 2009 came and I decided to buy a 15" MBP and I didn't dual boot it because I was going on vacation and didn't want to have Windows 7 as a crutch. I couldn't load my CAD software, but it was a vacation. I have to laugh at those who say Apples are better, they have as many if not more stupid issues as any Windows machine, previewing photos on a MAC? What a joke! Expanding a window on a MAC? What a joke! Launching an application twice with a MAC? What a joke! Software selection for a MAC? What a joke! I love the trackpad and typing experience and I must admit I love how quickly it boots up, shuts down, close the lid, it goes to sleep, open it and 3 seconds later you are working. I like the fact I get 4+ hours battery life watching DVD movies and I've hit close to 6 hours doing the basics, but HP has some units that will triple those times. I have an HP Laptop, but it's an HDX18 and it's heavy. I did take the MBP apart as soon as I bought it and it is easy to upgrade the HD and Memory, except all those little screws are a pain. A non-replaceable battery? Come on, what a joke!
I'm more familiar with Windows and printing a large image with multiple sheets was easy, it's in the Epson 3880 dialog box, I thought it was in Apple's as well, but it didn't work yet.
Once you learn the MAC os, it's a fine machine, but I wont buy another IMAC.
As far as price, come on, get real people, Apples are always more expensive, look at the Sony all in one,
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores...552921666002175a little tough comparison because the Sony is a 24" touchscreen (Apples are 21" or 27"), but it's a quadcore, 6GB ram, 1GB video ram, blu-ray, tv tuner, Card reader, remote control, HDMI, put those specs on the Apple (I guess you can't get Blu-Ray) and see how much more, $500.00?
I know my MBP was more than a comparable HP, Lenovo, because I priced them out.
If you are having luck with your Windows machine, why bother? You can always get more bang for the buck, more power and more software with a Windows machine. And if you want, you can build your own!
And one last item, you'd think that Quicken, Turbo Tax, Word, Excel are identical with the MAC versions, they aren't.
OK one final item, for some reason Apple doesn't believe that a numeric keypad is a necessity on a laptop, I would like one!