Macbook is not a good "investment" because Apple drop the price on new macbook and you loose the money on them the most.
New-ish macbooks can run windows as well , so its not like you have to get used to MAC OS (which is quite good btw). Also small thing - but you don't have a second mouse button in mac (although it is easy to do Right-Click).
Other than that Macbook are probably THE BEST laptops out there right now.
- Dell are good because of their support but fragile laptops
- IBM/Lenovo are good solid laptop that can take some beating, they have nice thin portable line too x300 etc
- HP are decent as well, but their support is not the best
- Sony are amazing laptops, but you pay for the brand name as well (meaning quite higly priced)
rest of them are mediocore.