Yesterday I spent some time online looking for a new laptop. I would like 14'', thin-and-light, and long battery life. I needed no more than five minutes to know all the offer from Apple.

Other companies like Sony or Asus are extremely annoying with dozens of "lines" of very similar products with confusing names. I didn't look at HP, but I remember it was weird, because they kept the Compaq brand so it was even worse.

Lenovo's T series is probably the best one in that class. Linux is well supported. Not sure that it is a better buy than a Macbook though.

Fujitsu has some good, relatively inexpensive ultralights. I use whatever their 13.3 screen model is. Anything bigger is tough to use in an airplane/cram in a bag.

I didn't mean to provoke an off-topic, but thank you anyway :-)

This is not necessarily a good thing for end users when there's a handful of different versions of Vista. Assume the average consumer in the US...that's Vista Home Basic and Home Premium and possibly Ultimate to choose from. At first glance do you know what the differences are? Or whether or not you need an upgrade or full version? (Let's not even get into the other versions of Vista, System Builder/OEM, EU versions, Windows Server et cetera.)

Compare with OS X (ignoring OS X Server). There are only two versions, period: OS X and OS X Family Pack. How obvious is it what the difference is between the two? Very. You just count the number of computers in your household you want to install OS X on, and buy accordingly. No upgrade/full version worries, no "what does this have over the other one?" worries, no buying something you don't need...

Sure, OS X doesn't come in so many "flexible" configurations as Vista does, but the thing about it is that you could just do that on your own if it meant so much, and otherwise you get a default config that works for most people.

Its a terrible thing for consumers.