Here's my take on the situation.
Dell Latitude laptops are generally considered to be cheap, mass produced, bits of plastic and metling batteries. They've had some pretty massive recalls of some of their laptop battery line because of potential fire hazards. Dell's support these days generally sucks and I'm not sure on what the warranty is but its probably 1 year. If its less than that you shouldn't even look at it. Windows is Windows...can't really go too wrong with a PC based laptop in that regard as we're all in the same boat there.
MacBook's have a similarly marked past as some of the Dells. The MacBook in its current iteration is new...its the "Mark 1" MacBook. The new "Mark 2" is due out in October or November. These are probably going to be
better than the current iteration which has had a share of manufacturing defects including some defective plastic casings (that were discoloring and possibly warping) and a heating duct that wasn't opened (plastic in the way) during final packaging so some MacBooks were overheating. Its not a fantastic history in itself...that said...Apple has rectified all of these issues and any MacBook you buy right now is likely to be new enough to have avoided all of these problems. MacOS doesn't run every bit of software but its a fine operating system...its very mature now and works extremely well. You will not get
of problems with the current edition. Its not perfect, it still hangs and crashes now and again if you do something silly with it, it has its share of security concerns, but compared to Windows its like a solid rock being compared to swiss cheese. If your mission in life with the laptop are things like e-mail, web browsing, music listening, some light photo manipulation or organization, and all of that sort of thing then MacBook will do it right out of the box. More pro stuff like Macromedia and Adobe suites are all cross platform and work exactly the same on MacOS as they do with Windows. Compatibility between Windows and MacOS is a non issue these days as well. Also...because of BootCamp...you can dual boot Windows and MacOS if you need a Windows critical piece of software to work. Apparently most games work without a second thought as well...so its not a bad setup.
I'd suggest, and I'm not sure if its on your radar, to look at another PC laptop maker instead of Dell. Dell is what everyone goes to...but its garbage cheap stuff. Didn't used to be...but it is now. They are the Walmart of computer companies. I would STRONGLY suggest you compare the MacBook against comperable models from LG and Fujitsu. They aren't well known for laptops but their laptop models are amongst the best on the market from everything from reliability to fit and finish. They are Windows XP based...nearly all are using Intel Core so you're comparing straight against the MacBooks Intel Core and they are just as affordable without the recall issues. LG and Fujitsu have a good track record for reliability so far...they are new to the market and they have to be good...so it works in your benefit.
Good luck!
