I just have to dispute the "fanboy" comments in this thread.
Keep in mind, since the introduction of Windows 95, I've always owned PC's so I wasn't a "fanboy". The Macbook Air was my first Mac and bought it on the recommendation of my best friend. He had one and was able to explain to me why he thought they were better. I trusted him, so I gave it a shot.
I have one of each, a Windows laptop and a Macbook Air. I picked up the Air when it came out a couple years ago and can't say enough good things about it compared to my Dell laptop. It's very light, ultra portable and the battery seems to last forever compared to the Windows based machine. It's much faster, even though the system specs are technically lower for the Air.
It boots in about 20s and shuts down in under 2s. The screen kicks the crap out of any other laptop I've ever owned and the Air is very quiet when powered up. Even with the fan running at full speed, you can't really even hear it. When you pick it up, it seems sturdier than the Dell even though it's much lighter. I'm assuming that has to do with the all aluminum uni body construction.
The charger for the Air is a mag lock, so if someone walks by and kicks the cord while it's charging it just pops off without doing any damage. The charger is also a much better design than the bricks that come with most PC's. It's about the size of my wallet and adds to the portability of the Macbook Air.
Another thing I really like is the cost of OSX upgrades. I was shocked at the price of the upgrade from Leopard (OSX v10.5) to Snow Leopard (OSX v10.6). Apple charged $29 for the upgrade and that included shipping of the disks. That and there is only one version for your home / work computer, so no messing around with choosing which version to buy like you have to with Windows.
OSX also natively controls the cores in the CPU unlike it's Windows counterpart. With Windows, the program you are running has to support the use of multiple cores. So you can have a quad core processor and if the program doesn't support it's use, then the other cores are just sitting there with nothing to do. On the other hand, OSX does this within the OS. So the programs don't have to support multiple cores as the OS makes sure you're getting full use out of your hardware.
I feel that OSX is far superior to any of the Windows versions I've used and other than the transitional learning curve, I can't say anything negative. I was surprised at how everything just seemed to work right out of the box. Its automatically detected my wifi connection the first time I booted and asked if I wanted to connect. Right after that it found my desktop PC, my NAS and asked if I wanted to connect to the shares. After it connected to the desktop, it asked if I wanted to install the drivers for the shared printer attached to the desktop. I said yes, and viola' it installed the drivers. No disk, no downloads, nothing.
The think "just freakin' works".
Don't get me wrong, they are more expensive, but I think it's worth the cost. The one thing you do want to check is the availability of software when it comes to the Mac. I haven't run into the problem, but have heard of others looking for software that was PC only. But, with their market share increasing, it's becoming easier to find things these days.
Edited by Spyderturbo007, 30 March 2011 - 09:45 AM.