Apple MacBook (Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, SuperDrive, black)

Pros: Sleek design, vibrant & bright display, good battery life and strong performance

Cons: Left Click button for the mouse would be nice

Summary: I'm a switcher, having always used Windows through various iterations, from 95 through XP, all of which gave me grief with issues such as system instability (Blue Screen of Death), performance and spyware. Luckily I never caught a virus because I was careful, but the risk still caused me to spend time and worry to prevent viruses. I also felt like my XP computers always ran slowly and required frequent restarts to speed up. So when my 5 year old Dell died, I was still apprehensive about switching to a totally different OS but I was willing to give Mac OS X a try. I was lucky to have two roommates who went on back-to-back vacations and who let me borrow their laptops while they were away, one a new Vista laptop and the other a 12" PowerBook G4 running OS X Tiger. I was able to compare the two in depth, and though I was frustrated at first with my unfamiliarity with OS X, I quickly learned how to do common functions on it and in general found the Mac to be very intuitive. I was also pleased that software ran smoothly and required fewer restarts and had fewer program crashes than Vista. Overall I was disappointed with Vista's issues (Firefox ran poorly, had many WiFi issues with our WPA network, etc.), and so I went ahead and bought the MacBook and I must say I love it.

Pros:
-It's beautiful: the hardware is sleek and feels solid and well built. The display has great resolution, color and brightness, and OS X is very visually appealing and slick. A dramatic advance over XP and I think it's even better than Vista, which does have an elegant look but still lacks the refinement and visual appeal of OS X.
-It's fast: I don't have to restart every few days as I did when my XP comp would grind to a halt. In 2 months of daily use, I have probably only restarted 3 or 4 times.
-Great software is included: the whole iLife suite is really useful and nothing comparable comes on a Windows machine. Also thankfully there is no bloatware.
-No more worry about viruses and spyware. I know technically it's possible for a mac to get this, but none of my friends who have used Macs for years have had any infections.
-I love the widgets and the two finger scrolling on the mouse.

Cons:
-I think peopled talked OS X up so much that I thought it would run perfectly, but that's not the case. You still have programs freeze on occasion and I even had one unexpected restart. That said, these issues happen perhaps with 1/5 of the frequency they did on my Windows computers.
-I was very worried about missing the left click, but the Mac sales person showed me how to use the two fingers on the mouse pad to left click function found in system preferences and it has made my life a lot easier.
-I would like the option for discreet graphics on the MacBook, although the integrated graphics has been just fine for everything I've used it for. I'm not a gamer.

Go ahead and make the switch. Even if for some crazy reason you hate OS X, you can always install Windows on your MacBook with Apple's Boot Camp software and still enjoy the fantastic hardware that comes on a Mac. I bought the MacBook knowing I could switch back to Windows if need by, but honestly I haven't felt the need to install Windows on it.