[speeder]

My experience has been that Macs are the Porsches of laptops and most of the big windows brands are more like Chrysler and GM. You get what you pay for, and in this case it is quality, durability and design, including user interface.

The Chrysler and GM laptops might work just fine, (as will the equivalent cars), but a little more upfront cost gets you a lot better hardware. My current Macbook has a ridiculous amount of travel miles and usage hours on it, has had water dumped on it, (replaced keyboard for $133 on ebay--works like new), and while I'd like a new one, it is running great. It's about 5 years old.