For work or pleasure? Have you seen that I'm a mac commercial where the PC guy is a corporate type while the mac guy is a regular joe? Well, is kind of true although not completely true. For what most people do on a computer any computer will do. What I mean is the avergae use of a computer is to write e-mails, surf the web, listen to music and share pictures. Maybe do some editing of pictures and music. For this type of application any computer will do the job. In reality there is no need for a high end computer for that. A $300 to $500 laptop will do the job nicely. The thing with apple is that it has a lot of nice software included. Because apple computers are made and controlled by only 1 company they can concentrate on making sure the software works correctly and without hitches. The catch with it is the price. You pay more for essentially the same thing. In other words you pay so that the problems have been solved for you. Pc as they call them refers to computers running windows operating system. This is a misnomer since you can have a computer running something other than windows like linux and yet be called a PC. The thing with windows is that it tries to cover a great range of machine configurations, setups and applications. Because of this, the quality suffers a little because you have too many options on software. Where mac offers you one word editor (probably more than one) PC offers you 10 both free and for money. So, its really hard to assure that all possible combinations of softwares work on all machines. This fault is also one of the PC's strength. You have more choices with the PC at a lower price. You decided which hardware you want, which software you want etc etc. With the mac you use what they give you. Ofcourse, what they give you is damn good. Outside of regular use the PC starts to become better. There are many softwares that are only offered for windows. The reason for this is that windows is use in 90% of the world where MAcs may have at best 5% (give or take, not an exact figure). It makes sense then that you as a bussiness person want to make the most out of your offering so with windows you get 90%. This is the true part of the commercial. Windows is used for work. If you plan to use your machine for working then windows might be a better option depending on the type of work you do. Ofcourse if you do artistic type of work then mac will have it but, more engineering type like manufacturing, engineering and other fields, mac are not as well supported. This however, is changing because of the open source movement and the virtual machine movement. You see, a lot of software now a days use some sort of virtual machine so the operating system is becoming negligible a lot of times. That is, the same software willl run both on macs and Pcs the same way with the same features. Another advantage Pcs have is service. Pc are very common so more people know how to fix them and have the available parts to fix them. Not so with apple. With apple you have to get their replacements part. With a PC you have many choices on the replacement part. And yes, both machines break. Apple computers are not indestructible they are machine. They are good machines but as any other machine they will break. It will cost you to fix them. The good thing about macs is that people who use them all swear by them. That is I have not heard anything negative about the mac from people who use it. However, I have not seen people at work use it so, I don't know how well they do in a working environment. I say, give them both a test drive. See what feels more natural to you. I mean, if all you are going to do is write an e-mail then might as well do it in something you feel comfortable with. I myself will be sticking with the PC for a while just because I'm use to it. I know what to expect and how to fix most things. I also can use it to work with proffesional software if I needed to like autocad, GE PLC offerings, PC board design software and what not. Remember that you have to use the software that your job uses and if your computer doesn't offer it then you are SOL. Ofcourse this assumes this is your case. Like I said in the beggining, it depends what you will use your computer for.