I was shopping with my son for a "cheaper" laptop to carry around law school with him. We looked at Nebraska Furniture Mart in K.C. Kansas and they have a large MAC section. The Apple sales rep said something about i5's and i7's not being "real" on the other companies laptops. The impression was they were hyperthreading or making it up as it goes along. We ended up buying a Toshiba at about $400 less than the Macbook he was looking at. He likes MAC's but it seems like the "law school" software (databases and such) favors PC's and Windows 7. . .I don't know why! I did read up on hyperthreading and didn't really see how the laptops were much different except in the way of software.