Go for Mac ... 🙄

Windows updates are pretty bloody constant and eventually your PC grinds to a halt trying to run them all

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Vista / W7 is a different animal in many ways to XP and its predecessors, but it still gets tarred by the same brush used to dismiss Windows 95. I'm starting to see how Skoda must've felt.

Vista has its faults (which W7 fixes), but I've always held the unpopular view that Vista was exponentially better than XP. It's a good OS once you get UAC under control.

Apple hardware looks pricey - £700 for a MacBook Air with an i5 chip at John Lewis, whilst the cheapest i5 chipped windows laptops go for £500.

There could be several reasons for that. If a newer MBA it will have the latest Intel Ivy Bridge chip. Also, are they the same clock speeds? Plus is the rest of the hardware comparable?

Not cheering on either 'team', but just because 2 laptops are i5, it does not mean they are exactly the same, and therefore be the same price.

Anyway.

If you are considering a lightweight laptop, as well as the MBAs, you want to hold fire for a couple of weeks. Most manufacturers will be bringing out their new Ivy Bridge based '[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook ]ultrabooks[/url]' this month. Most will be retailing at £600-700+ though, so you will be paying a premium for the form factor.

Info: http://www.pcworld.com/article/256854/35_new_ivy_bridgepowered_ultrabooks_coming_over_next_30_days.html

The henge docks are a disaster, we have a load at work and they've all been ditched as they were nothing but trouble.

If you just want it to casually knock out the odd document and run nothing more than picassa I'd save your money, I surf at home almost solely on a tablet.

Mac hardware is lovely but I wouldn't pay the premium if it was my own money. I also couldn't run OSX as my only OS.

The new windows ultrabooks are just as nice IMHO though and Win7 is a fine OS.

The cheaper i5 "PC" laptops are generally higher hardware spec but with a bigger 14 or 15 inch monitor (ie, bigger form factor) and considerably less battery power. I'm looking at the MBA just because it's the cheapest mac laptop on JL's website!

I'm typing this on a Samsung NC20, which is a bit slow now, but to me a MacBook air is probably a high performance ally cased version of this - 12 inch monitor, 6 hour battery life etc.

For ultraportable duties, the Samsung does a fine job - it's not something I do often at all, and it's old enough and cheap enough that I'm not terrified of it getting nicked.

Ultimately I'm looking for a fastish laptop with docking station because I'll also be able to use it in the front room. I won't be lugging it around the country with me.

Something to think about, what software is in the box, It might make the difference in price.

Personally i would go Apple, i just prefer the OS and i prefer the feel of the laptops etc.

Having slept on it, I've twigged there's a third option - just get my current PC working better and carry on with the laptop / phone for casual browsing.

My current machine's a Dell Vostro (2.4GHz CPU, think it's an Intel e4600, 2 gigs of RAM). I suppose that would be a full motherboard / CPU / RAM swap. Any pointers in that regard (do people still sell motherboard, CPU and RAM bundles)? I used to build my own PCs, so I know how to swap stuff, but I've no idea what's what nowadays.

In a similar situation to you I carried on using y net book (nc10) but fitted a solid state hard drive and some more ram, it's fine for browsing, basic picassa, excel etc.

I then built a hackintosh (desktop pc running mac os (snow leopard) this obviouslly has a lot more oomph if I need to run more serious programs, works great as an itunes server etc. This was actually going to be a windows machine but luckilly the hardware I got was pretty much mac compatible. I went for Mac os as it was only £30 compared to £130 for win 7, which I'm not a big fan of in the first place.

So what I ended up with was a midhigh spec mac that cost me about £450 and a few days of mucking about patching the little incompatibilities. Now runs great, updates are infrequent but seamless startup and shutdown is rapid, obvioslly doesn't have the sleek factory mac form factor, but still looks pretty good IMHO

Personally I find the build quality of cheap PCs are terrible, I have seen so many cracked cases. So I would not go for one personally. My wife has a 2006 Macbook that has only just been replaced, she used it every day and it has been a great machine (though the battery has just died this year) I think this is a testament to quality. It has just been replaced by the new MBP retina – sweet.

Myself, I have a work HP Elitebook, awesome windows machine but you are talking mac money, but it is the only machine I can honestly say is of Mac quality. My home machine is a Dell XPS15 - which I replaced a macbook pro with, I was a sucker for spec and wanted quad core, nice screen etc (pre quad MBP) and I really wish I just got a macbook, as nice and expensive the Dell is (£900 machine) - its still not got that quality feeling but it is fast.

So personally, I could only suggest getting a mac, the quality is amazing and I think that ensures longevity. And remember they all run windows really quite well (Arguably better then they run OSX - I got geeky once and wrote an article on this and benchmarked a bunch of intensive application on a few separate macs running windows and OSX and windows was ALWAYS faster).

Get a mac and run the OS you like.

do people still sell motherboard, CPU and RAM bundles

Have a look at [url= http://3xs.scan.co.uk/Category.asp?SystemMasterCategoryID=41 ]Scan[/url], they do some quite good bundles. You'll probably want a new graphics card as well, and maybe a new power supply if you're going for something gnarr. Neither need be expensive.