How much, realistically, would a laptop with Windows cost with a similar spec? I'm really tempted into buying a Mac, people tell me they are outstandingly brilliant and the greatest investment one could ever make. I play on them in the shops and they look pretty, but what's the big difference, really? Style does matter to me so I get that they look faf, but is that all it is?

They are good, very good. If you were to compare them to windows machines don't compare them to the Dells and Acers, compare them against Sony top Spec Toshiba.

They look good if that floats your boat and the Apple after care is second to none.

The OS is one of the best around, I've got it running rock solid on two Wintel machines.

I'm still not sure they are worth £1500 though.

as a college student I can only dream, but we all have those annoying rich mates/mates with student loans and their macs are a delight to use, do everything windows do and more and very good for creative programs (photoshop etc etc). I'd say if you can afford it, I mean [ireally[/i afford it, get one.

And a laptop with a similar spec you'd be looking at £800-£1000 I guess, but the retina display is exclusive to apple, and their OS is a lot faster than windows. I guess there are equivalent screens, on laptops, out there but not too sure where.

1. There is nothing you can do on a Mac that you can't do on a Windows machine.
2. Photoshop is the same on both OS'es
3. On the same hardware both Win7 and OSX 10.7 are hard to separate speed wise or stability wise.

Do not be fooled by the hype and someone trying to justify paying £500 over the odds.

is it a myth that video editing is better on a mac? (srious question, as a friend tells me it is, and it's why I am considering getting a hackintosh)

You'd have to define better, faster? Nah not really and certainly not enough to justify the premium, that spec is going to churn out video rendering pretty quickly anyway. Easier? The only really difference was Final Cut Pro, sadly they have dumbed it down so much that you'd be better off using Adobe Premier.

As for a Hackintosh (I'm posting from one now) only pay for one if you (or someone you know and is close by) has none, they need a good knowledge of the OS to keep it right.

One of my closest friends has a hackintosh that he built himself, he's a total tech head when it comes to hardware and software, sells systems into businesses (all the kit, config, everything) so he'd keep it right for me, he uses Final Cut Pro, but one of the older versions, I believe. When we came back from our last trip we had just under 1TB of HD video, he converts it to RAW before he edits it, it took something like 8 days for it to convert. We're looking at also building a really stupid spec machine for video as we've now got about 8 Go Pro 2's in our group that go skiing.

I'll have a look at Adobe Premier, hadn't considered it.

RAW video is new to me...
The old version of FCP is fantastic as was Logic Pro for audio before Apple dumbed it down and Adobe caught up.

A decent spec Hack shouldn't cost to much to build, then you'll see how much Apple sticks on top for the fancy design.

apologies, the correct terms are "converted to uncompressed .mov format and conformed to the correct frame rate and ready for editing" (lifted direct from the email he sent me a few days ago)

Has anyone on here got any opinions on a Chromebook? A non-tech-savy relative wants a laptop and has asked for recommendations, asking for the price to be as low as possible, so the Mrs asked if the Chromebooks are any good. They seem a nice concept.

Great if you have a permanent internet connection, useless if you don't.
A Netbook for under £200 would be the way to go.