My 3 daughters have used both Operating Systems since they were tall enough to reach the keyboard.
Back in 2001, they wanted a P/C because all of their school work was being generated for Windows XP and of course MS Office.
And all their friends seemed to have P/Cs.
Boy was that a mistake!!!! Three girls sharing a P/C
It didn't take very long before they realised their mistake and now all three of them have their own MacBooks.
No more adware and spyware gumming up their system, no more virus attacks hosing their system and no more weekly anti-virus updates to waste my time.
Without knowing what your parents do for a living, it's difficult to recommend the correct system.
In most cases an iMac is the best family computer.
In many cases people buy their products based on price rather than quality.
Others are simply not willing to break out of their comfort zone, feeling that
they MUST buy a system compatable for their work environment.
Those systems generally allow the IT administrators at work to regulate
what they can do on their private systems while accessing the network away from the office.
Of course all of this can still be done with a Mac, but even the most highly trained Windows certified IT professionals are clueless to these capabilities.
Also maintaining Windows = job security
My best friend just purchased his first MacBook Pro to help him with
presentations. He and his wife have had no trouble at all connecting
to VPN networks at work and are running both Mac OSX and Windows XP Pro.
His boss just bought his own MacBook Pro after seeing how flexible and secure my friend's system was and their Keynote presentations are putting
others to shame.
This was no simple task, these people were Windows hardiners.
It's difficult for many people to break that mindset of " WE MUST CONFORM"
I've pretty much stopped trying to convince people why they should go to Mac OSX.
If they can't see the benefit of the most flexibility in their system,
then there's no point in arguing with them.
Like the others have said here, save your own money and buy your own computer.
