I tend to take PC specs with a grain of salt after playing with my mac mini and then using my cousins Dell desktop that was far superior spec wise. However the dell seemed much slower at multitasking and working basic video and photo programs.
I guess you have to look at how well the system utilized the resources its given. Its like putting a 400HP engine in a 800 pound race car, being compared to putting a 600HP engine in a 1600 pound race car. Some people are going to run over to the 600HP engine and say this must be better because it has more HP, but the real racer will go over to the 400HP car because he knows that it will outperform the other car in every aspect.
That's one of the best analogies I have heard in a long time.
What you gain PC-wise in raw specs you lose that and then some when you load up Vista and other bulky PC software.
On the Mac, not only is Mac OS X more efficient than Vista, but also you do not need to run anti-virus and anti-spyware software, which on PCs must run in the background (and take up resources) 24/7. Also, drivers on Mac OS X just work, and do not require bulky, unnecessary, and ugly control panels that run in your system tray.
You don't need Quad Core or better graphics if all you are going to do is...
- Surf the net
- Check e-mail
- Chat & Facebook
- Write papers/documents
- Download music
- Watch videos
- Do basic video editing
- Do basic or advanced photo editing.
Those kinds of tasks, which is what most people do with their computers, do not require those kinds of resources.
The only time you will see a difference is in gaming and doing really high end encoding or editing, but that is just a small percentage of users. For a mac, you'd get a Mac Pro for that stuff anyway. And for gaming, well if you are a major gamer then you would get a higher end iMac or you wouldn't even be a mac user to begin with.
Think about it, a processor that is theoretically 15% to 20% faster can load a program in 4.6 seconds instead of 4.0 seconds, or 4.8 seconds instead of 4.0 seconds.
How likely is it that you will be able to feel a 0.6 to 0.8 second difference in everyday tasks? I would bet that it is not very likely at all.
In fact, do what I did. Go down to an Apple store and play with the MacBook, the iMac, and the Mac Pro. You will see that even the fastest processors available such as those found in the Mac Pros have little impact on loading software and doing everyday tasks.
I loaded up Photoshop on the MacPro on display and surprisingly it took a few seconds to load up, just as it does on my Macbook (which uses an SSD drive). In fact, I think my MacBook loads it faster. Now I am sure that if I were to encode a 2 hour HD video on each computer, the Mac Pro would blow my laptop out of the water, but for tasks like the ones I mentioned above, it is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT.
Speed differences and spec differences are purely academic and have no impact on reality for MOST users, so don't get a boner over a PC All In One having slightly better specs on paper. It doesn't mean its a better machine and it doesn't mean it will provide a better experience for you.