I just got my MacBook Pro Retina on yesterday and I am so glad I opted for 16GB of memory. Curious I decided to do a bit of price comparison.

My MacBook Pro Retina is configured with Intel i7 2.6 GHz 4 core, 16 GB of memory and 512 GB SSD with the highest end Retina Display. These are what I looked for when comparing to a Thinkpad and Dell Laptop. Price $2999

Dell M4600 Laptop has the enterprise options with multiple drives, etc. I added equivalent processor, RAM, and SSD. Price $4,648

Lenovo Thinkpad T530 has again many more options, but only allows a 180 GB SSD, so the $3,409 price would be much higher if you could add a 512 GB SSD.

Let alone how these machines look.

The Dell XPS 15 is $1799, but at this time I could not upgrade the RAM, or SSD. It's price is $1799 for 8GB and 720 GB HD.

The MacBook Pro is being criticized for being too expensive. It is not for those who the MacBook Air works fine. Apple was smart in limiting the MacBook Air to 4GB.

If you want 8-16GB of RAM a 512 GB SSD. And, 4 core i7 is useful, then the MacBook Pro fits.

I used to work at Apple on OS, and Microsoft on Windows. I run Parallels and Windows 7 on the Macbook Pro which is another reason why 16 GB of memory is nice.