[jamroom]

Yep - in the long run it has been much cheaper for me as well. I moved full time to Mac in late 2008 with an aluminum Macbook, and used that Macbook daily until May of 2015 when I picked up a loaded Macbook Pro 15. I got almost 7 years out of that first aluminum Macbook (which I actually still use to serve media to my Apple TV), and I bet I get that (or more) out of my Macbook Pro. Previous to 2008 I was getting a new Windows laptop pretty much every other year as I always encountered the same slowdown as you describe. I think that Windows laptops get better than 2 year now due to decreases in overall CPU speed improvements relative to what we were seeing between 2000 -> 2010, but the build quality of the Macbook was something no one else could touch at the time.