well apple laptops are quite expensive, and what chucker said about lower qaulity of the other laptops... i don't really agree with that point. for example you can buy a branded Windows OS laptop with Pentium Centrino 1.8 Ghz, 1GB ram, radeon X700 128 MB, 100 GB HDD, DVD-RW and all those bluetooth, firewire, WLAN and blah blah included for about 1500 Euros. And PB 1.6 Ghz with less configuration cost 2100 Euros. (I don't about the US)
I myself have a PB G4 15" and yes i paid 2100 Euros and it looks good and I like it. But if i really think about it, I could have a bought a PC-comp with same config and more warranty period, branded one for way cheap. and that doesn't make that notebook poor quality.
Ecs, what you should be asking him is that... which applications does he want to run, and what is the most compatible OS for that... because now i am stuck between the windows OS and Mac OS and trying to choose one for my next laptop. read my thread posted
here and there read the post from beardedmacuser. that would help your friend a significant amount.