Raw power is basically irrelevant for what I use computers for (furry porn, hate mail, organizing tea party meetings), and I'd pay twice as much for a computer that was half as slow but paid attention to little fit and finish-type details, and this is because I am a typical Apple fanboy. I also would pay more for a better-looking but less-functional Braun turntable if I could afford it. Apple makes very well put-together hardware, in terms of build quality and so forth, but as the Internet has documented very well their hardware aesthetics are borrowed wholesale from Dieter Rams. It's more the quality of the OS I care about. The fact that your average Mac application is "uninstalled" by just actually deleting it the way you'd delete anything (since they use "bundles" and do not strew little bits and pieces of themselves across your system (binaries ("DLLs" on Windows) not data or user settings)) just makes me sleep better at night. Despite that I did get a low-end Acer PC just for TV-attaching purposes, as it was very cheap, Flash (as needed by MLB.tv) works better on Windows, and has direct HDMI out.
But I don't think most computer users notice/give a shit about these things. At my job the last few holdouts switched to Macs and after months some of them don't quite understand the placement of the menu bar (on Macs, not attached to any particular window because the GUI enforces a distinction between a "window" and a "program"), that system settings can be adjusted in myriad ways, etc etc. We should have saved money any not gotten iMacs for these people. Windows 7 is very, very good. The only "problem" with Microsoft today is that they don't like breaking backwards compatibility with the oodles of shitty customized business applications out there which ties their hands. Apple on the other hand has no problem telling users and developers to go f themselves.
Despite that, kind of odd that Tom's Hardware of all places doesn't even mention any of the issues about Nvidia Optimus vs. Apple's solution for seamless switching off between the integrated GPU and the dedicated GPU, unless it views that as a battery life issue only. That's the kind of irrelevant implementation detail that I thought they gave a shit about.
foobar2000 for Windows is the best mp3 jukebox program out there; iTunes has exactly zilch going for it except that you need it for the iTunes store and iDevices (and Doug's Applescripts site). Despite that it always baffles me when people say they don't like iTunes because it can't do this or that when it most certainly can.
And if all you care about is saving money, get a Lenovo and put Ubuntu on it. Use GIMP and OpenOffice. The software is all ugly but it works fine.
