Mine's the 5800u model, but the 4800u one has gone as low as $450 new in the past. It supports Linux and Windows out-of-box, it's cheap as chips and it's fast enough to swap spit with whatever my Macbook Air would be running.

I like some Apple hardware; I've got a couple Powerbooks stacked up somewhere, and the early unibody models weren't terribly flawed. Modern Macs though... if you manage to ignore the OS issues, you still have to baby the hardware out of fear of a $700 topcase replacement (or worse). It's investment on top of investment on top of investment, and the returns keep getting smaller after every OS update.

To each their own. I simply don't subscribe to the "one size fits all" mentality towards Apple products, even as "normal people" computers. It's not worth starting a flamewar over though, so I'll leave it at that.