Hmmm... I actually like things that are built and designed well - 98% of windows laptops and desktops are built like a sardine can - rickety and rattly pieces of junk!
My latest gen MBP17 is my desktop for all intensive purposes. The build of the thing is amazing. Same the Macbook Air 11" latest. I'm curious as my folks need an update and have always run Windows machines (my sis works for MS). They are not easy on devises and both hate "cheapy stuff" as my mom says. Thanks for input.
As I said before, Apple machines are built to a standard, and Windows machines to a price.
Compare apples to apples (no pun intended). You'll pay about the same for a Macbook as you will a high-end Windows laptop. These cheap laptops just don't compare... Fast forward five years and see which one you're still using - and how much they're still worth, respectively.
I am typing this on an IBM Thinkpad X60s, one that still says IBM on it. I bought it when it came out, it is now five and a half years old. It's an ultraportable that weighs about three pounds. Back in the day I had the choice between a Mac and the IBM, and boy am I glad I chose the IBM.
It's built like a tank. I've been carrying this laptop through years of field research in six countries with -stan in their names. I've worked in archives with no insulation at -5°C in winter and +45°C in summer. Once in Tashkent the zipper of my shoulder bag failed and the laptop dropped five feet on asphalt and landed on the lower right corner with a very ugly sound. I thought "that was it", stepped aside with a feeling of quiet despair, opened the laptop and switched it on. It booted up normally, with screen and hard drive intact. That was when I found out that it was worth every penny.
I got a four-year, world-wide, next-business-day, on-site warranty with it, for $250. I need this because I work in strange countries and the price was a joke for what you get. Once when there was a problem I called IBM service from Uzbekistan and they walked me through the problem, saying that if their walkthrough didn't fix it they would send me a technician with the spare parts from Moscow to Tashkent with the next plane, for free. Once in the fourth year it had a loose keycap on the the keyboard. I called service, the next morning a technician came to my home with a replacement keyboard. He looked at the laptop and said, "Your screen backlight has gone a bit dim, would you like a new screen?" and pulled a spare screen out of his bag and gave me a new screen for free. (That was after the drop, they could just have refused to service it altogether. Many manufacturers would.)
The Thinkpad has the best laptop keyboard in the world. I prefer my keyboards from companies that have been building heavy-duty typewriters since 1935, rather than from companies that make them look backlit and pretty. I'm looking at you, Apple. In all fairness Apple used to make good keyboards back in the day; the Apple Extended Keyboard from 1987 is fantastic (I still have three) and it wasn't cheap at $180 - but for some reason they abandoned this great tradition for the sake of looking pretty.
I can download the hardware maintenance manual for the IBM for free. It's a 240-page document that contains information like the recommended torque for the body screws. I can completely tear down the laptop using only a Phillips head screwdriver. A few weeks ago the now five-year-old fan started to make some noises. I got a replacement fan and heatsink assembly, part number 41V9748, for $40. Changing it required a complete teardown of the laptop down to the motherboard. Taking apart the laptop, changing the fan and heatsink assembly and putting it together again was a 90-minute job at the kitchen table. For all practical purposes, the laptop will work forever until something like the motherboard fails.
It has a lot of little things that make me appreciate it. The screen is non-glossy, so I can work with it when I have a window in my back and see something else than whether I'm shaved or not. The keyboard is lit from above with a little LED, which has the advantage over a backlit keyboard that (a) you can build better keyboards, and (b) you can see something else with it than just the keyboard, such as handwritten field notes. I can swap the battery when I'm in the field; usually I had two with me that gave me 15 hours of work without an electrical outlet. When the old batteries started to go weak after four years or so, I could buy a new battery and just swap it in.
An Apple would have had an advantage or two. The main advantage of the Apple is OS X, which is a reasonably nice operating system. I ran OS X on the Thinkpad for about a year. It worked well. Eventually I got bored with it because there was little that made me more productive with it than I would have been on another platform. I now run Windows XP and Debian again.
Admittedly the IBM is a high-end machine and not a $600 laptop. Back in the day I paid close to $2000 all in all. That was on a student budget and I worked three months for it in order to get a machine that would get me through my PhD. It was worth every single cent of that money. But if I had chosen a $2000 Apple instead, I would have been worse off in every respect. I couldn't have written 150.000 words of final text, plus the notes that I wrote it from, plus some 25.000 lines of code for data processing on that keyboard. I'm not convinced it would have survived what happened to it. Service would have been shorter overall, and worse in the regions where I need it (I have plenty of colleagues who find out how "world wide" the Apple Care plan really is when something happens in the middle of nowhere).
I am admittedly a fan of the IBM in a way that extends to few other products. However, I'm a rather critical customer and they have deserved their place in my esteem over and over. It's my third Thinkpad, and the first new one after a used 240 and a refurbished T20. (I can still get the maintenance manuals, download drivers and find replacement components for these machines, even though they came out more than twelve years ago.)
In the high-end to high-end comparison, Apple comes out a distinct second. They are just not up to the same standard. If you want camera equivalents, the IBM is the equivalent of a Leica or a Nikon F, while an Apple would be the equivalent of an Olympus Pen F or a Fuji X100 - pretty, well-designed with ergonomics in mind, in some respect outstanding, but not up to the same sheer proven industrial-grade quality.
I'm looking for a replacement now. While I am considering Apple, it is a distinct third-rate consideration, behind a Toughbook and another Thinkpad. I'm unsure about the newer Thinkpads because I don't think Lenovo service is as outstanding as IBM service was. The MacBook Air is pretty, but that's about it. I don't trust them; I have two friends with the older 13" MacBook Airs that developed problems with broken screen hinges during the second year. I also have no experience with Panasonic world-wide service. Not an easy decision!
