Mac's aren't immune to virus. There just aren't enough Macs out there for someone to bother to write one for them yet. If they become more popular and more people buy them - then you can expect it to happen to them as well.
They are overpriced, hardware isn't as good as PC's/laptops, and there are far fewer programs/apps written for them - still. The PC platform is still far more economical and plentiful by a great margin. If you like your Mac for doing photos - I can understand that. But for a majority that still likes having a platform with so many versatile uses (as well as photo work) - I'll make mine a PC any time; any day...
Security concerns notwithstanding, I completely agree about the comparative value of Apple products vs. their PC counterparts.
It's not that Macs are bad machines; in fact, I think their notebooks are quite nice and are better-built than 95% of PC laptops. However, I think even the hardcore Apple fans can admit this: the Apple brand name has become something of a status symbol (for lack of a better term) in recent years and there's a significant "bandwagon effect" going on, at least among the college-age people I know. The result is a price premium that has nothing to do with the actual quality of the product, and everything to do with the "hip factor." To reiterate, I'm not claiming that Macs aren't high-quality products or that they aren't worth
any price premium over comparable PC's; I'm simply saying that given their huge surge in popularity, many customers are willing to pay more than the products are worth on their merits just to "join the club," so to speak. And if customers are willing to pay an excessive premium, heaven knows Apple is willing to charge it (they've been quite adept at that for as long as I can remember).
This is anecdotal, but I've been running Vista (and more recently Windows 7) on various machines for several years with no problems whatsoever. No viruses, no antivirus software. No blue screens of death. No crashes. What I've seen a lot of with my friends and classmates lately is that they'll make very poor choices WRT sites they visit and files they open on their PC's, then use the ensuing problems as an excuse to switch over to Apple (despite that being a poor budgetary choice for most students). It may be true that OS X is more resistant to viruses and security breaches than Vista/7, but in most of these cases, the owner could have solved 100% of his/her problems simply by reformatting, reinstalling Windows, and using a shred of common sense thereafter.
All that said, I think the upcoming HP models references in the original post are a joke. I bought a new laptop this past winter and went with a nice Dell Latitude for $800 (rather than a MacBook or MBP) because budget is a factor for me. But if budget
wasn't a factor, there's no question I'd choose a MBP over any HP model any day of the week. One of the strongest selling points of the Apple notebooks is their ability to run both OS X (without hacks) and Windows natively; plus, their build quality and sleek design are hard to top. I'm not sure what would drive someone to spend an equal or greater amount on this knock-off HP model.
