I've used a 2nd generation Macbook Pro that costs my employer close to $3000 (4GB RAM, 2.4GHz, 160GB HD) for 2 years, during which time the graphic card (Nvidia 9600M GT) died twice (screen suddenly went blank); battery died once (could not hold charge for an hour and would shut everything down without warning); Apple Mail corrupted its IMAP data countless times; much software annoyance: maximize/unmaximize/resize surprise etc.
Before the MBP, I've been using a $1000 amd64 notebook with 1.5GB RAM for 3 years without any issues, running Gentoo (! did need to google to fix multi-monitor support and ndiswrapper/wpa-supplicant for wifi) and it felt snappier than the mac with much faster processor running Leopard (up to 10.5.8).
Now I'm using a $600 laptop (with 4GB RAM and 320GB HD with higher display resolution than the MBP: 1680x945 vs 1440x900) and a 2.5lb $200 netbook running Ubuntu Jaunty. Everything worked out of the box including wifi, webcam and desktop effects. Feels much snappier than the Mac as well. All it took is a little googling _before_ buying the machines :)
It's much easier for Apple to QA limited configurations. Frankly, I'm quite pleased with the progress of Linux desktop.
The laptop is a desktop replacement 18.4" Acer with intel chipset (4500HD graphics etc.) bought from Amazon (free shipping and no tax! Looks like it's not available anymore, probably discontinued) 6 months ago. The netbook is a Dell mini 10v from Dell outlet on one of its 15% off offers.
The Acer has an HDMI output. I connected it to my 24" 1920x1200 Samsung and point and clicked the monitor applet on the gnome panel and viola, dual monitor support at full resolution without having to fiddle xorg.conf! Point and clicked to configure the wifi on both machines without any problems. Man, I was ecstatic, probably due to the low expectation from my Gentoo experience -- I was expecting to vi a few things to make them work :)
To be honest, I did have to add a fixmtrr.sh to gdm PostLogin and a line (MigrationHeuristic greedy) to xorg.conf to fix the intel video performance regression in Jaunty on both machines, when I felt the desktop effect was a bit sluggish. Now the desktop animations are smooth as butter even on the netbook.
I did choose to install 32-bit Ubuntu with server kernel (to get PAE in Jaunty) to take advantage of the full 4GB RAM, instead of 64-bit because flash and a few other things don't work as well as in 32-bit.
Before the MBP, I've been using a $1000 amd64 notebook with 1.5GB RAM for 3 years without any issues, running Gentoo (! did need to google to fix multi-monitor support and ndiswrapper/wpa-supplicant for wifi) and it felt snappier than the mac with much faster processor running Leopard (up to 10.5.8).
Now I'm using a $600 laptop (with 4GB RAM and 320GB HD with higher display resolution than the MBP: 1680x945 vs 1440x900) and a 2.5lb $200 netbook running Ubuntu Jaunty. Everything worked out of the box including wifi, webcam and desktop effects. Feels much snappier than the Mac as well. All it took is a little googling _before_ buying the machines :)
It's much easier for Apple to QA limited configurations. Frankly, I'm quite pleased with the progress of Linux desktop.
Just another experience and perspective...