highflyer40,
We are now thinking of a MacBook Pro, but they are over twig the cost of a windows OS, do you actually get your money's worth?
Yes, absolutely, as long as you obey the usual rules of buying any computer in terms of Maximum RAM and a picking a reasonable processor.
Most Macbooks come with 8GB RAM these days, so if you can afford more, then great, but otherwise its really just the processor you need to worry about, in which case its the same as in the PC world, if you can afford/stretch to Intel i7, then that should absolutely be your target but otherwise a decent i5 based machine will suffice.
Most Macbooks also come with built-in SSDs these days, you don't need to work hard to avoid spindles, from memory I think they've only got one model with spindles, their entry-level basic one.
If you do a lot of graphics work, then you could consider the higher end models with the beefy GPU. But if you don't know your Photoshop from your Lightroom, or your Premiere from your After Effects, or don't even know what a GPU is, then you'll probably find you don't need to concern yourself too much in that area.
Robust, reliable, well designed computers. OS X is a pleasure to work with.
Plus you can run Windows in a virtual machine without problems, I do it every day.
There
might also still be the little known added bonus that you can legally buy an OEM copy of Windows to run on Apple hardware. I say might, because you'll need to check the license terms for current versions of Windows (8 or 10) , its been a little while since I looked. Normally Windows OEM has to be bundled with hardware by the manufacturer at the time of purchase. But as I said, please check current license conditions.
Make sure you get the AppleCare warranty, it does help. Plus
I think they even cover accidental damage these days !
In terms of costs comparisons, two things :
(1) You should really be doing an ROI comparison ... a decent MacBook Pro will absolutely be able to last you somewhere between three and five years.
(2) Make sure you are comparing properly..... the Windows OS department is full of very nasty crap that looks cheap on the price tag, but that's because it
is cheap inside ! (stuff like celeron processors, nasty slow hard drives and whatnot). I'm NOT saying the cheapest possible entry-level Apple MacBook is perfect, but its light years away from the cheap entry-level end of the PC market !
P.S. highflyer40 ... beware the stupid resident Apple bashers who lurk in the PPRuNe forums. Take what they say with a pinch of salt if they decide to contribute their "valuable" opinion to your question.