My family has laptops from dell, gateway, and acer. The only problems that I've seen with any of them have been caused by user stupidity. Maybe we're just lucky, but I think most people just treat their laptops very very poorly. The only problem with my old dell is that the power connector has been loose ever since I knocked it a couple feet off a counter onto a hard floor . The magnetic power connector thing is one of my favorite things about macbooks (that seems to be a fairly common point of failure) but it's really not worth an extra $1000.
Heh. I guess it just seems I've seen a lot more "bad apple" PCs than I have with MBs.
I love the magnetic charger. It's saved my ass dozens of times. I've dropped my MBP quite a few times, I've spilled water, soda, coffee, etc. on the keyboard and I haven't had a single problem. For something that's not meant to be ultra durable, this thing sure is a trooper.
I don't have a desktop here because I didn't have a good way of bringing mine. I have a pretty hard time being restricted to a laptop, and I'm going to try to get my PC here next time I go home.
I don't think I'd ever spend more than $1000 on a laptop. I'd never buy a laptop if I intended to do any sort of serious gaming. My MBP was a little over $1000, and I've been rather pleased with it. Maybe it's just something like the placebo effect, but I've never been so pleased with a laptop. A year after I bought it, everything is still working as it should. No broken chargers, no busted keys, not a single hardware failure, etc.
That's not to say I'd never buy a PC laptop again, or that I wouldn't recommend a PC laptop to someone else. I'm just very pleased with my MBP.