I used to have a powerful (and a monster of a...) laptop - the DELL Inspiron 9100. A couple of years ago I bought myself an iMac, mainly to start editing video with iMovie and/or Final Cut Express. Even though I haven't really edited a single minute of video; I've become very found of the computer and the mac-applications, such as Mail, Safari (even though I also regularly use Firefox), AddressBook, and all the others. The 20" is soon to be raplced with a new 24" with a boost in disk space, CPU-speed, and memory. I also installed Parallels, and transfered my entire old PC-laptop onto it to be able to run the few applications not yet supported on Mac.
I used to own a really noisy media-pc, with a really crappy TV-tuner, in fact so bad I never even used it except for the time trying it out. I used the computer for streaming videos over my home network, and for watching online videos (YouTube and nrk.no). However I'd always had to turn if of after using it due to the noise, and it took a long time starting it. Last fall I replaced it with a brand new Mac mini paired with eyetv hybrid and the eyetv software. This works great and I'm finding myself watching TV almost exclusively through this. With iTunes (to download video-podcasts), QuicktTime PRO, Perian and Flip4Mac this has become a very good solution.
I used to have a really really slow laptop at work doing development on Norway's largest classifieds-site. I had all sorts of trouble with this computer. I changed the disk once (some of my colleagues changed theirs multiple times), it always seemed to do anything but what I wanted it to do. In comes a new 17" MacBook Pro! This changed my working day from misery to joyfully! I find that running development tools (like the Intellij IDE, DB Visualizer, TextMate) is a breeze. It runs fast and without any hassle. The screen is wonderful, and the fact that Mac OS X is based upon a UNIX operating system makes life so much easier and less troublesome.
So which do I prefer? I guess I love all three of them - each for it's use, and I guess that the point of creating such different computers - they each fill a specific set of needs. One thing is certain, I won't re-enter the PC world any time soon.
