When looking for a comparison of the Macbook vs. PC laptops, it is important to keep in mind that we are not exactly comparing apples to apples here. Such a comparison can be difficult in that the Macbook is a single laptop, manufactured by a single company - Apple. On the other hand, to treat "PC laptops" as a single, homogenous group is complicated by the fact that PC laptops are made by many different manufacturers (Dell, HP, Toshiba, Acer, etc.) and they each run a foreign OS - Microsoft Windows 7. In this article, I will attempt to compare the Apple Macbook to a typical PC notebook, that is, comparing features that most PC laptops have in common. Still, it is good to keep this critical difference between the two groups in mind.
Design
A great laptop should always begin with a solid design, even while design so often seems to get the short end of the stick as it were. A beautiful and aesthetically pleasing design helps to ensure two things: First, it has the practical effect of providing a clean, edgy look to a computer. It's always nice to have your laptop look as sweet as it works. Second, it shows that the manufacturer takes some care in the work they do - that they are not motivated by profit alone, but in making a great product that consumers will love. As far as Macbooks and PC laptops go, this is a difficult category to judge since PC manufacturers all have different designs that are constantly changing. Apple's aluminum unibody enclosure and glass covered LED display offers a very elegant design presentation to its customers, most people would agree. By contrast, many (but not all) of the PC manufacturers use a cheap and oftentimes poorly finished polycarbonate case that just leave something to be desired. The design on other features, such as Apple's Magsafe power adapter, with built in magnets that eliminate the need for a M/F pin system and allows for increased prevention of damage due to tripped and pulled cords, is also vastly superior to anything else on the market.
Operating System
When thinking about buying a Macbook vs. a PC laptop, the operating system is an important matter to consider. While Windows 7 is a fantastic upgrade from Windows Vista, I'd still have to give the OS award to Apple for their Mac OS X. There are a few reasons for this. For starters, many of the features that Microsoft tried to integrate (with only a marginal degree of success) in Vista had already been in Mac OS X for years. Apple's OS is constantly on the cutting edge, but there is one major benefit that sets it apart. The Macbook has a tremendous advantage over PC laptops because both their hardware and software are designed and made by the same people, whereas Microsoft has to make their OS for hundreds of PC manufacturers. There are going to be less bugs and compatibility issues with a computer whose hardware and software are both made by the same company - this is a major advantage. The only disadvantage to running Mac OS X is that there is still a lot of software that is made only for Windows, which still controls about 90% of the market. But, this is beginning to change. Also, newer Macbooks can also dual boot Mac OS X and Windows, for those who still need to run certain Windows programs but prefer to do most of their other work in the Mac environment.
Check out more points of comparison on the next page.
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