Apple computers have always been excellent machines, beautifully designed with software to match. Their iLife software offers seamless integration with your iPod and iTunes, and if you’ve got a video camera, just plug it in, download your footage, edit it and burn it to a DVD. Try doing that on a PC. You’d have to buy lots of software, but it’s all as standard on a mac.

There are many different laptop models to choose form, each having been designed for a specific purpose. If you are a home user, then I would recommend you look at the iBook series, where a business user should target the iBook Pro series. Both of these were discontinued in 2006, to be replaced by the macBook and macBook Pro respectively, but still offer great value for money, and a high specification machine can be bought for as little as $300, compared to their original price of $1500 .

There are cheaper models on the market too, specifically the iBook G3 ‘clamshellâ€