to buy a non-Apple laptop when I already own an iPhone and a Mac desktop?

[aNoteToFollowSo]

I love love love my iPhone and so forked out for a Mac desktop when I needed a new computer. Waste of money in my opinion. I'm sure it does all sorts I dont know about, but it just wasn't worth the extra money for the way I use it.

Now I need a laptop, as I am going to be doing some work away from my desk. Money is tight right now and anyway, I don't want to pay a huge amount for another overpriced Apple product.

BUt I also want an easy life, and am fairly ignorant technically i.e. I want everything to work and synch with as little effort as possible. I only need the laptop for documents, and might occasionally need to to hook it up to a projector for a workshop. Would I be okay with a budget laptop? Or am I now a confirmed Jobs slave, forced to buy Apple forever after?

And while I'm about it: any recommendations for a good budget laptop?

TIA

I love Apple - my iPhone, iPad and iMac!
We also have a HP laptop... can't for the life of me work out Windows! No one uses it. I regret it massively and wish I'd just got a Mac laptop.

I was afraid of that Womble. The Apple laptops are just so damned expensive. But thank you for the benefit of your experience. I wondered how hard it would be to get back into using Windows, especially while simultaneously using my iMac.

I'm really hoping someone else comes along to tell me its fine after all

You can buy word/powerpoint etc for your mac, so you'd be able to transfer and open documents easily between the two. Would save you money I guess

I use both. I've got a little MacBook Air for my personal things (together with an iPhone) and a windows laptop which I use for work.

I don't have problems with synching now that I generally use Google docs and have Google accounts for mail etc (for personal stuff). I also use dropbox for moving documents between the two.

I have found it's useful to have both systems. I can only use the scanner on my Mac (the scanner is very, very old!) and the windows machine can't find it; and yesterday one of my colleagues sent me a Pages file for work which I could quickly download onto my Mac, covert to a Word format for work and dropbox back for work rather than have the hassle of asking him to re-send it and having to wait again for the document.

I don't have trouble converting, although I do lose the @ sign occasionally!

Work for a big UK company, we only use Windows on our many thousand PCs and laptops. It's fine, not complicated. It will give you exactly what you want. A google Chromebook would probably suffice.