I need some help from mac owners!

Hi, i will go straight to the point.I am from czech republic and i totally fell in love with macs. I never want to have to cope with any microsoft products because most of the time they seriously annoy me. However I have been usin PC for all my life and in here, they are much cheaper than macs.
However I am now on edge of buying either macbook (the 2,16GHz one, the middle one, not black) or a PC laptot that for the same amout of money will give me the same or better CPU, sometimes even double harddisk space and 2GB ram expandable up to 4GB. Pretty much double configuration in most of them. I have been using my friends macbook pro 17" and it was terific and couple of my friends have macbooks but since they are not really using them for any specific things i was not able to get a decent opinion on them.
I am hopefully going to graphic design school next year so applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Flash are my everyday tools.
So please, could someone tell me wheter i should get the macbook (which i would love to have, but i am just not sure) and later on purchase 20" screen with it or buy a 14" to 17" PC laptot of very similar or better configuration.
Thanx a lot for any replies, links, suggestions etc...

Fellow Apple fan

Urghh.... this is kinda hard to answer. IMO, if you can't afford to buy an MBP then buy a PC laptop. I just don't like the MacBook's material (it's my personal preference).

Performance wise you'll be better off buying a PC laptop for the same price as the middle MacBook model. It seems like you will be using some graphic intensive apps, so a dedicated graphic card will be mandatory. Plus you'll have spare money left to buy a large external monitor if you wish.

I am truly a fan of Mac and love the OS X to death but given your situation + budget I'd go for a PC laptop rather than a MacBook. Otherwise, buy the MBP (I highly recommend it).

Well right now I am using a tabletop PC which has 2,80 GHz Core 2 Duo, and 1GB ram and integrated graphics card and so far it was powerfull enough. (except its pc ) thanks for the reply...anybody else has experience with this?

Hey Franki! Welcome to Mac-Forums.

Just a thought... Did you have a look at Apple's refurbished section? I don't know if your intentions are to buy online or in a real store, but Apple has a refurbished section and the reburbished models carry the same warranty as a brand new Mac.

Graphic design is best on Mac if only for its colour management.

hey thanx
didnt know about that...
do you think it would be wise to buy them if am living in Czech republic? do they even ship here for reasonable prices? i was considering buying a mac from US because they are much cheaper but the shipping adds to the price i would have to pay for it here anyway...