Dear Aunt TUAW: Should I buy a Windows laptop?

Everybody loves a great deal no matter what time of year it is. With Christmas slowly passing by there will be some awesome after Christmas deals to be had on refurbished laptops and desktops. Finding the right refurbished laptop or desktop for yourself is not a hard thing. Most sites offer customer reviews of each product they sell and market which allows previous buyers to give present buyers an idea of what they are buying. It is always helpful to read those reviews before you make your decision. You can check "ElectroComputerWarehouse" and I am sure you will find a good one for you..

I don't now why you'd want a Windows laptop, I personally would just put Windows on a bootcamp partition on it and have the build quality of an Apple and Windows, all while retaining the ability to use/learn Mac Os as well..this of it as the best of both worlds.

I just got a $829.99 iPad2 for only $103.37 and my mom got a $1499.99 HDTV for only $251.92, they are both coming with USPS tomorrow. I would be an idiot to ever pay full retail prices at places like Walmart or Bestbuy. I sold a 37" HDTV to my boss for $600 that I only paid $78.24 for. I use GetCent.com

it's cool ... if your dumb enough to move to Windows ... you deserve it ... have fun

I find this to be an obscene question not worthy of the high standards i have come to expect from TUAW, therefore I refuse to even entertain the concept necessary to compose an answer.

There is only one correct answer. Buy a Mac. It runs windows. There is also free open source software to switch between the two OS's - virtualbox (from Oracle) - so you don't need to invest in other virtualization software that runs them both simultaneously. You'll still need MSFT Windows if you don't have it, but borrow from a friend (family), or maybe a copy from Asia - the only place in the world that you pay for Windows what it's actually worth - around $2.

Yeah Auntie, I agree with a lot of the commentors on here. Jon, if you're MacBook Pro is so beloved why not repair it? If the budget is the primary issue, then run Windows via Boot Camp on your Mac if you need to. If you need a new machine, get a refurb and still stay within budget. Getting a Windows machine is limiting yourself.

This sounds like a bad Sociology experiment to me. "What would happen if you took a Mac user and forced them to switch to a PC for a year?"

I use a lenovo x220t for med school and there is no possible way I could use a mac instead. I use the tablet functionality to write my notes on onenote, and then the laptop function for my other coursework. Tegrity, a class recording software we use, only works well with windows.

Overall I love macs, and many people in my class use them, but there are still certain times a windows laptop makes more sense and is able to perform better or do more.

If ALL he wants to do is run windows, then he should just boot camp or run parallels. From a financial perspective, all it would cost is a windows license, (and parallels if he chose to go that route). Who knows though, maybe he want's to achieve 60 fps on full detail in world of warcraft, by all means I say go for the superior seletion of PC laptops out there.