I'll bite. It's lighter, has better hardware specs, a better screen, an incredibly well thought out operating system, better support by far, its a far more fai

I'll bite. It's lighter, has better hardware specs, a better screen, an incredibly well thought out operating system, better support by far, its a far more fair comparison to compare a rMBP to a ThinkPad, or an HP EliteBook, than it is to the 250 dollar HP you can buy at Walmart or Best Buy - yes, they do the same thing, but they are not the same thing. When compared to a comparable product in the market, the product Apple sells isn't merely the hardware, its the total package, the support offered, the ecosystem, and honestly a certain amount of brand name snobbery - the big thing that impressed me about my Mac versus the 4 ThinkPad's I had was that everything "just worked" right out of the box, no full day customizing, and applying windows updates. Instead I was able to start work immediately, yes, I installed some software, and a better text editor, but that was not due to deficiencies with the built in software (as in it wouldn't work at all), but that I had certain work flow preferences that required something more advanced. I loved my ThinkPads, yes, they're expensive, but incredibly well built machines, but I always was having some sort of Windows related issue - or worse, when I got my last TP in 2010, I installed all the updates on it, and the BIOS update deleted the SLIC (the BIOS based windows activation) and the only repair was a new machine or a planar (system board) replacement - so they replaced it, and extended my warranty for 6 months - but I had other issues that required Depot Service, bad Lenovo packaged nVidia drivers that caused me to only get 16 bit color (they replaced the screen and system board under warranty), a RAM issue (intermittent of course), 5 replacement keyboards, and so on, and while I have no issue with the quality of the support I was offered, I paid 2000 odd dollars for the hardware, it shouldn't need depot service in the first year really of ownership, yet it was in the shop twice in the first year. I've had my rMBP for a year, and other than perpetual issues with time machine backups (largely because I'm using netatalk) its been completely trouble free - I'm not saying Apple products are perfect, they just require less effort on my part to keep working - and when you spend all day long troubleshooting other peoples problems, the last thing you want to do is come home and fix your own tech.