SilverBlade said:
To be fair, I'm compairing a Macbook Pro with other computers (Toshiba, Dell, Acer) with similar specs.
Fine then. Give us some proof. I can't imagine a similar brand name system to a Macbook Pro being 50% or 60% of the price of any Apple laptop.
The best similar HP machine (without serious detail research) was; nc8430 Notebook PC (EY688AA) for $1750. That is 87.5% of the similar Apple product. The HP does come with better warranty and more memory and some other slightly better specs. So I'd have to say HP might have one over Apple there. They also offer the Core 2 Duo as an option, which we're still waiting for. [EDIT]: Apple offers Core 2 Duos as of October 24, 2006.
In the end the small difference doesn't matter to me, and many others. The problem with the non-Apple vendors is that their hardware does not (officially at least) run Mac OS X. If Apple were to officially support other vendors hardware, I'd be open to quality non-Apple hardware.
P.S. It was interesting how you qualified your selection after someone mentioned how Mac Pro desktops are extremely competitive with that cheapy company Dell. Actually you can find net stories that show the Apple product was much less expensive.