So here is what I see.
The actor looks at HP's. Cool. Nothing wrong. Then it happens...
He goes to the macs, doesn't do so much as look at specs or touch the keyboard trackpad. He just spouts off a line about aesthetics, then walks away. Why even go to macs if he already has a preconceived notion in his head about them?
He wanted portability, battery life and power.
Portability - 16" is not portable. Yes, someone earlier claimed it is portable, just bigger and heavier. Technically the 21"-23" laptops I have seen every now and then fit your definition of "portability", but you know they aren't portable. Portable means light and small, easy to carry. Bigger, heavier, etc goes against that.
Battery Life - Macs have the best battery life I have seen in a laptop these days. They have amazing battery life, and that is WHILE using wifi, with brightness on, etc. How the heck did he go with an HP over a mac when looking at battery life?
Power - Macbook unibodies come with a dedicated graphics card. That still fits in his limit. They come with powerful intel cards, 2 gigs of ram, upgradable, DDR3 ram. I don't see the HP having DDR3. The macbook wins here too.
So for his lifestyle, a 13" Macbook Unibody would have been the ideal purchase. Not to mention that thanks to the setup microsoft made, it doesn't matter if he got a $900 or a $1500 computer because M$ would comp him for it. And for the guy trying to defend the HP earlier, yes, an external monitor would help with the screen. That's more $$$ and would put him past his limit. I don't remember the rest that was said in that post, but it all cost more $$$ over the original price of the computer.