Making the right choice??? Mac over Alienware?

Saw your thread in the Alienware section, as well...I own both brands, and can say that I'm very happy with the MacBook. It's great for a non-gaming system - very portable and quite snappy. I don't see Core Duo as a downside (compared to the Core 2 Duo on the Sentia), but that really depends on how important it is to you to get the latest and greatest.

A MacBook is also a good complement to a more powerful desktop or 17" notebook, so should you ever decide to upgrade to a larger system, you'll still enjoy the MacBook for portability and it's also a good way to get introduced to Mac OSX...

gah i have an alienware 51 m7700, that i just sent off to be repaired, it wouldnt boot or ne lights come on after a year and a month of work. and so far its been there a month and its been a hassle. plus the thing ran hotter than crap. i now have a 17" mbp and games work perfectly and look beautiful, and it aint burning my desk i would go with the mac as long as its a mbp

I had a MacBook Pro 15.4" model that I later traded for a used Alienware m5500. I actually really liked the MacBook, but I needed money and came out with the Alienware at about $1000 less. The prices are probably closer together when you're talking new machines.

I loved the Mac for it's DVI port, thin and light design, and extremely quiet performance. I even overclocked the video (or rather bumped it up to "normal" X1600 speeds), and it didn't seem to run any hotter.

I used Boot Camp to install Windows, and it went smoothly. All my software was for Windows, so I didn't use OSX all that much. There were a couple of annoyances in Windows on the Mac that made me want to switch back to a native Windows machine. Notably, the right click functionality without an external mouse, which was impossible without some kind of key mapping kluge job, the backlighted keys not working, the battery indicator and power settings not working properly, no web cam, etc. These weren't huge issues, but they were annoying enough to me. Many of these might be fixed by now though for all I know.

All in all, if you're interested in "migrating" to OSX, the Mac is a great choice, but if you're going to use Windows primarily, I'd consider some of the small bugs before deciding. Good luck!

fwiw, right clicks, power, and webcam, are all newly implemented with newer versions of bootcamp afaik.

I did it, couldn't be more happy!

-Alex